In fairness to the "literary fiction" establishment (is this something I even want to be fair to? I guess I must if I'm writing this comment), I did see a LOT of criticism of Yanagihara at the time for exactly this kind of artificially constructed, almost operatic, trauma-porn element of the book, and more specifically the equation of that trauma porn with queerness, when she herself is not writing from a place of being queer or having experienced the kinds of trauma she's writing about. Like, to the point where it felt like the controversial provocateur element of the book's release was responsible for as much of the attention it got as the more straightforwardly glowing reviews that undeniably also existed. Which does at least indicate that the conversation about how to write responsibly across difference, is one that fiction writers and readers are having.