i will never read anything like this ever again.

i'm still reeling from it--i've only finished the book literally 5 minutes ago. but goddamn. hanya yanagihara is a genius. how is it possible that she just made all of this up? that all of this, all of the people and their interactions and the tastes and sensations and sights and feelings she described, all of these things were just pulled straight from her imagination? all of the characters, with all of their extremely varied lives and whom belong to extremely varied fields, each one is written with such detail and accuracy that i can't help but feel as if i know these characters--these people--in real life, despite never having met anyone like them. and this is all just from hanya yanagihara's mind. how is that even humanly possible?

there were times wherein, while reading, i had stopped and started to google one of JB's artworks, or one of Willem's films, before remembering that they weren't real, that none of this was real. yet everything felt hyper-realistic. everything was so fucking visceral. everything we feel during the course of this book--sadness, horror, frustration, elation, euphoria, desperation--each emotion is so vivid, so real.

i had to stop myself several times and say: it's not real, it's just a book, it's fiction. but then, so what if it's not real? so what if it's just a made-up story? in the course of 800 pages, we've been with these characters through every up and down and up and down and down and down again. it doesn't even matter if it's just fiction--all of the things we felt along the way were real. every smile and laugh and tear and sob.

i'm sure i will be thinking about this book for the rest of my (not so little) life. goddamn.