Real Life
Author: Brandon Taylor
Publisher: Riverhead
View on Goodreads
Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop,* which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
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.
TL;DR Review
Real Life is an aching, bruising story about a young Black gay man struggling to wade through his circumstances that will leave you gutted. And the way Brandon Taylor uses words is incredible.
For you if: You like emotional, character-driven literary fiction with lyrical prose.
Full Review
Wallace puts his elbows on the table, which rocks sharply, dangerously. The tea shifts. Miller’s eyes widen just so, and Wallace holds his breath until the table and the cup and the whole world steady themselves.
Real Life describes itself as “a novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy.” Those are good words to describe this story, but they aren’t enough. The writing is just gorgeous, gutting. Every chapter leaves you feeling something unnameable that feels almost like sadness, a tiny bit like emptiness, and sort of like passion, too.
The story takes place over a single weekend, Friday evening to the early hours of Monday. The main character is Wallace, a Black and gay doctorate student studying biology. He came to the university to escape the South and the family he left behind, and he has struggled against prejudice and privilege the whole time. As he’s normally closed off and introspective, it’s unusual for him to join his friends on a Friday night (or, at all), but this week, he does.
That kicks off a domino effect that tears at the walls he’s put up around himself and forces him to look hard at himself and his relationship with the world. He and a few others crash into each other, bounce apart, hold, tear, hurt, soothe, and leave behind the precarious normalcy they’d built before.
I think what was most fascinating to me was the way Brandon Taylor zooms in and out of detail. When the characters are talking to each other, there is very little detail — the dialogue stands on its own, bounces back and forth like a tennis ball. But in moments of description, he zooms so far in that I can’t even believe how many details are included. Every tiny movement, every sound, every instance is documented. The result feels resonant and deeply emotional.
Roxanne Gay said in her Goodreads review: “The way Taylor writes about bodies in the physical world is one of the highlights in a novel full of highlights. Truly, this is stunning work from a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways.”
This book will not be for people who need a fast-paced plot, because that’s not the point of this novel. It’s all about ache and heart and gut and body and mind and emotion and life. In the small moments. In every moment.
Trigger Warnings
Child rape
Physical abuse during sex
Racism
Homophobia
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.