“One of the things my editor and I did fight about…is the idea of how much a reader can take. To me you get nowhere second guessing how much can a reader stand and how much can she not. What a reader can always tell is when you are holding back for fear of offending them. I wanted there to be something too much about the violence in the book, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of empathy, of pity, of horror. I wanted everything turned up a little too high…”

— Hanya Yanagihara

On debating the reactions of her readership in “Hanya Yanagihara: ‘I wanted everything turned up a little too high’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/26/hanya-yanagihara-i-wanted-everything-turned-up-a-little-too-high-interview-a-little-life in The Guardian (2015 Jul 26)

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Hanya Yanagihara 4

American novelist and travel writer 1974

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