Real Life: A Novel
A FINALIST for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the NYPL Young Lions Award, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award
"A blistering coming of age story" --O: The Oprah Magazine Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Public Library, Vanity Fair, Elle, NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, Huffington Post, BBC, Shondaland, Barnes & Noble, Vulture, Thrillist, Vice, Self, Electric Literature, and Shelf Awareness A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice.
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends--some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community. Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it's ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.
"A blistering coming of age story" --O: The Oprah Magazine Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Public Library, Vanity Fair, Elle, NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, Huffington Post, BBC, Shondaland, Barnes & Noble, Vulture, Thrillist, Vice, Self, Electric Literature, and Shelf Awareness A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice.
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends--some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community. Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it's ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.
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Community Reviews
I had a really hard time getting into this book and it could either be because of my attention span or because of the audiobook narrator when I tried to read it again. I think it was just too slow for me.
Brandon Taylor is the entire reason I’m on Twitter. I love the way he writes, love his ideas and quirks and literary commentary. So I knew I was going to love this book. But I was still blown away by the writing. The writing!! Phew.
There are writers who are good at capturing internal dialogue. There are writers who are masters at descriptions and scene-setting. There are writers who are able to set up a constant tension that strings everything along.
Then there are writers like Taylor who can do all of the above. I fell so deep into this book, despite being quite uncomfortable most of the time. Wallace, a gay Black biochemistry grad students in a midwestern town— suffered an unending string of indignities— constant cutting micro-aggressions, deeper cutting (not so micro-) aggressions, cruel losses and traumas. If the writing wasn’t so sublime, I frankly would have been tempted to turn away.
I’m glad I didn’t turn away.
I grew reading this book. I absolutely understand why it’s shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and I think everyone should read it. I read an interview where Taylor made it clear that this story wasn’t for the white gaze; that he wanted to faithfully tell Wallace’s story without needing to make it palatable for others. But I am a white, heterosexual woman and I gained a lot from spending one weekend muddling through with Wallace and all of the selfish assholes he’s stuck with.
There were several scenes that I thought could have been shorter, times when the characters just kept going around in the same circles, the dialogue repeating itself over and over. I’m sure it was all deliberate, evoking the frustration of Wallace’s life, but it felt a little overdone to me.
There are writers who are good at capturing internal dialogue. There are writers who are masters at descriptions and scene-setting. There are writers who are able to set up a constant tension that strings everything along.
Then there are writers like Taylor who can do all of the above. I fell so deep into this book, despite being quite uncomfortable most of the time. Wallace, a gay Black biochemistry grad students in a midwestern town— suffered an unending string of indignities— constant cutting micro-aggressions, deeper cutting (not so micro-) aggressions, cruel losses and traumas. If the writing wasn’t so sublime, I frankly would have been tempted to turn away.
I’m glad I didn’t turn away.
I grew reading this book. I absolutely understand why it’s shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and I think everyone should read it. I read an interview where Taylor made it clear that this story wasn’t for the white gaze; that he wanted to faithfully tell Wallace’s story without needing to make it palatable for others. But I am a white, heterosexual woman and I gained a lot from spending one weekend muddling through with Wallace and all of the selfish assholes he’s stuck with.
There were several scenes that I thought could have been shorter, times when the characters just kept going around in the same circles, the dialogue repeating itself over and over. I’m sure it was all deliberate, evoking the frustration of Wallace’s life, but it felt a little overdone to me.
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