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He paints a real human face on the epidemic and, for me at least, kicked away some of the complacency I felt toward recent medical breakthroughs.

Murphy’s unblinking exploration of the AIDs epidemic also gave me a refresher on the early AIDs fight, as well as explaining issues that those with HIV and AIDs still battle with today. Murphy never delves into cliché and captures the city I fell in love with more than many of the other New York-centric novels that have come out in recent years. The Christodora, the building in the East Village that the Traum family inhabits, is just as much a character as Milly, Jared and their adopted son Mateo, and really anchors the narrative while it sways in and out of each decade. However, Murphy makes it look effortless, bouncing from character to character across multiple decades without ever losing narrative steam. Nonlinear storytelling has been a literary trend of late, and can be tough to pull off. Much like Rachel Harper’s This Side of Providence, Christodora is an emotional ride that never suffers from syrupy sentimentality because of Murphy’s straightforward prose and sharp dialogue. The novel features deep, well thought out, damaged characters that were hard to let go once the story ended. Daniel Ford: I was completely enthralled by Tim Murphy’s heartbreaking novel Christodora.