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Real Life

A Novel

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Real Life

By: Brandon Taylor
Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
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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. Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction
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Real life describes the events of one weekend in the life of genetics PhD candidate Wallace, at some Midwestern University. Wallace has more on his plate than seems fair: being black and gay in academia and struggling with the traumas of his past as much as with everyday racism, the failed experiment feels like the last straw.
The story must be eye-opening for anyone who somehow got through their 20s with less baggage. Brandon Taylor delivers a moving portray of a group of friends and the loneliness of its members. His style is pleasant, fascinating even in hyper-realistic or hyper-sensitive observations of his characters' motions. There are some less elegant passages and not all of the dialogue works (especially when it's read aloud), but the beginning and ending chapters are powerful in their own right. Kevin R. Free's reading is decent, giving recognizable voices to the characters, without fuss or big drama.
Being a molecular biologist myself, I enjoyed the realistic descriptions of lab life and rivalries and the dooming sense that there must be more to life. I'd make it compulsory reading for colleagues who have the pleasure and responsibility of supervising young academics. More than that, it's a engaging story about finding a place in the world, friendship, and overcoming agonizing conditions.

coming of age in the lab, must read for scientists

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in chapter one I felt overwhelmed with keeping track of all the characters being introduced and trying to keep their roles straight, but as the story went on I felt as if I was a silent part of the friend group to. it was beautiful to see all the different dynamics at play and how reach relationship brought up different things for Wallace. I lived the pace of the story where not much is happening, but we get to spend the weekend with Wallace and his friends as he faces the things he's tried to push aside and is confronted with thinking about what he wants for himself and for his future. I think it's a good read for anyone but will especially pull on the heart strings of those who are also Black, Queer and trying to understand their place academia.

intriguing story telling on belonging, loss and healing

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