Taylor is also tackling loneliness, desire and-more than anything-finding purpose, meaning and happiness in one's own life.' - Time with tenderness and complexity, from the first gorgeous sentence of his book to its very last. 'Equal parts captivating, erotic, smart and vivid. There is a delicacy in the details of working in a lab full of microbes and pipettes that dances across the pages like the feet of a Cunningham dancer: pure, precise poetry.' -Jeremy O.

Taylor proves himself to be a keen observer of the psychology of not just trauma, but its repercussions. 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. 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. 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. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood.

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 AwarenessĪ novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice.Īlmost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. 'A blistering coming of age story' - O: The Oprah Magazine Description 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

Real life by brandon taylor review