But that, and so much more, is what Brandon Taylor has done in Real Life. For a debut novelist to disentangle and rebraid intimacy, terror, and joy this finely seems like a myth. Truly, this is stunning work from a writer who wields his craft in absolutely unforgettable ways.” -Roxane Gay Wallace, the man at the center of this novel, is written with nuance and tenderness and complexity.

He writes so powerfully about so many things-the perils of graduate education, blackness in a predominantly white setting, loneliness, desire, trauma, need. The intimate prose of Brandon Taylor’s exquisite debut novel, Real Life, offers exactly that kind of writing. “There is writing so exceptional, so intricately crafted that it demands reverence. Amid the flurry of new novels drifting down like so many balloons, Real Life is the one weighted with confetti.” - The Paris Review “Real Life asks questions many of us shy from: Who is entitled to pain? How useful is an apology? Can sharing our feelings free us from them?. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Real Life is a gut punch of a novel, a story that asks if it's ever really possible to overcome our private wounds and buried histories-and at what cost. But a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defenses, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community.

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. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice.Ī novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend-and a lifetime of buried pain.

Real life by brandon taylor