A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice.
Brandon Taylor is the senior editor of Electric Literature's Recommended Reading and a staff writer at Literary Hub. His writing has earned him fellowships from Lambda Literary Foundation, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Tin House Summer Writer's Workshop. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in fiction.
Praise for Real Life:
“[A] stunning debut . . . Taylor proves himself to be a keen
observer of the psychology of not just trauma, but its
repercussions. . . . 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. Harris, The New York Times Book Review
“Equal parts captivating, erotic, smart and vivid . . . [rendered]
with tenderness and complexity, from the first gorgeous sentence of
his book to its very last . . . Taylor is also tackling loneliness,
desire and—more than anything—finding purpose, meaning and
happiness in one’s own life.” —Time
“[Real Life is] a sophisticated character study of someone squaring
self-preservation with a duty to tolerate people who threaten it.
The book teems with passages of transfixing description, and
perhaps its greatest asset is the force of Wallace’s isolation,
which Taylor conveys with alien strangeness.” —The New Yorker
“Real Life is a tender, deeply felt, perfectly paced novel about
solitude and society, sexuality and race. It explores what the past
means and, with brilliance and sympathy, dramatizes the intricacies
of love and grief.” —Colm Tóibín
“A blistering coming of age story. . . [Taylor] is so deft at
portraying the burdens that befall young queer people of color and
the forces that often hamper true connection.” —O: The Oprah
Magazine
“Brandon Taylor emerges as a powerhouse . . . . In tender, intimate
and distinctive writing, Taylor explores race, sexuality and desire
with a cast of unforgettable characters.” —Newsweek
“A pleasure . . . So well written I felt like I was watching the
events, rather than just reading the prose.” —NPR
“It’s fantastic. He’s such a phenomenal writer, it just floors
you.” —Elliot Page, Esquire
“[A] classical ideal of a novel . . . Every scene, every
dialogue, fits perfectly over a hall-of-famer first sentence[,]
delicate interlocking layers of story that build satisfyingly up
and out around Wallace, his father, and his friends.” —The Paris
Review
“A perfect, meditative read.” – USA TODAY
“Both calm and quiet and furiously dramatic, internal and external,
Real Life moves like, well, real life—but with a key difference.
Real life itself can be super boring. But Real Life . . . is
utterly captivating all the way through.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, The
Today Show
“Taylor’s vivid characterization is punishingly effective; his
essayistic insights into cultural dynamics and their impact hold
searing power. Erotic and ambiguous [and] hard to shake.”
– Entertainment Weekly
“One of the best debut novels in recent memory. . . . [Real Life]
leaves the reader spinning. In a good way.” —Shondaland
“Brandon Taylor reimagines the dusty expectations of the campus
novel . . . Taylor is a brilliant and eloquent prose-stylist who
effortlessly conveys entire lives in brief flashes of narrative
insight. Most impressively, he writes deftly about the blurring of
attraction, friendship, and grief.” —Alex McElroy, BuzzFeed
News
“Shattering.” —Elle
“With the rigour of the laboratory, Taylor wields scalpel-like
prose, putting human behaviours under the microscope . . . precise
and masterly.” —Financial Times
“What Taylor does next will be worth watching.” –The
Washington Post
“A novel of quiet, startling power.” —Harper’s Bazaar
“Taylor avoids cliches around campus living and instead—through
various interpersonal and institutional scuffles—offers a look at
the relentless erosion of dignity many students of color experience
at college. —SELF
“Psychologically compelling, incisively satirical, told in a muted
style that nevertheless accesses a full emotional range, this is a
brilliant book, worthy of a wide audience.” —The Guardian
“A profound look at the depths of desire, knowledge and prejudice .
. . a refreshing take on the traditional campus novel.” —VICE
“Taylor’s debut is of a rare and vital sort. . . . Taylor’s grip on
the subtle movements of the human heart and psyche is masterful.”
—Huffington Post
“Astonishingly accomplished . . . Even at its darkest moments, Real
Life is a piercingly beautiful book. In tracing the fault-lines
that rip through Wallace’s emotional world, Brandon Taylor has
written a truly exquisite story of love, sex, death, and microbes
that is both intimate and expansive.” —Times Literary
Supplement
“Explosive . . . [Real Life] gets so much right.” —The Point
“The writer who came most to mind as I read Real Life was James
Baldwin, especially the erotic Baldwin, attuned to social pressure
and violence, and deeply committed to the power, the uneasy force,
of sex. . . . The exquisite tension in Taylor’s litany of physical
details underscores the harshness that threatens the scene’s placid
surface. . . . The details here have the savor of the real.”
—Bookforum
“Real Life is a great American novel, a great college novel, a
great summer novel, a great queer novel, a great novel of life as
it has always been lived by young people waiting for their 'real
life' to begin, and just a really, really great novel. . .
. It's the best novel I’ve read this year.'” —Dazed
“Brandon Taylor’s Real Life doubles as a great grad student novel
(most attempts trade in stereotypes; this offers the real,
complicated, dark thing) and a great, positively Persuasion-like
novel about the relationship between consciousness and embodiment.”
—Commonweal
“A poignant, exacting story. . . . Taylor is an extraordinary
cartographer of Wallace’s loneliness, crafting a finely wrought
story of academia, intimacy, and identity.” —Esquire
“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? . . . Amid the flurry of new novels drifting down like
so many balloons, Real Life is the one weighted with confetti.”
—The Paris Review
"Taylor brings the precision of a scientist to his descriptions of
Wallace’s desires and defenses. . . . [capturing] the ennui of
those caught between the lure and the loneliness of academic
science, trapped in an existence that doesn’t qualify as a 'real
life.'" —Forbes
"Astounding." —LA Review of Books
“[Taylor] is as keen an observer as his subject is, and he writes
with extraordinary precision: about the academy, and queerness, and
race, and trauma, and ambivalent friendship, and desire. About all
the things that, put together, make up something approaching real
life.” —Constance Grady, Vox
“A deeply moving study of race, grief and desire.” —The Sunday
Times
“Real Life poignantly illustrates the dissonance of not feeling
accepted or understood at an institution that aggressively markets
itself as immaculately progressive.” —The Guardian
“A literary breakthrough.” –Interview
“Brandon Taylor’s bravura first novel… shines a vital light on
race, class and sexuality, and in doing so leaves his reader in no
doubt as to his unique voice and talent.” – Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
“Taylor's writing is vibrant as much as it is brutal in its
elegance and poignancy” – Paper
“A masterful debut.” – LAMBDA Literary
“A book wonderfully observant on the toxicity of whiteness,
and a reminder of what even the smallest racial slights can do to
the body and mind.” – Wired
“As a stylist Taylor has, sentence by sentence, crafted an
experience of bone-deep pleasure for the reader that stands not at
odds with the melancholy of the tone of Wallace's story but in
loving support of it. The penultimate chapter alone is a knockout,
and its end would have been a magnificent closing for the book had
the actual final sentence, a few pages later, not surpassed it.”
—Salon
“In the character of Wallace[,] readers are gifted one of the most
compelling and original characters in recent memory.”
—The Advocate
“No one with a former life as a biochemist should be able to write
a novel as devastatingly good as Real Life is, but here we are.”
—Thrillist
“The most indelible stories will not prepare us for heartbreak, and
Brandon Taylor’s debut novel is merciless in this way. . .
. I’ve dreamt for eons of a novel to depict gay Black men,
rich with feeling and desire, reclaiming their narrative from the
throes of whiteness. Without a doubt, Real Life is the first great
novel this decade will ever see.” — Paris Close, Paperback
Paris
“Brandon Taylor won 2020. His debut book came out in February and
it is still always on the tip of my tongue when someone asks for a
recommendation. He crafted such a quiet moody book that is somehow
more explosive than an action-packed thriller.”
—Debutiful
“The best portrayal of an introvert’s inner and outer life in
recent memory. With smooth prose and a deeply nuanced
protagonist, Real Life is one of those timeless stories that
also perfectly captures a generational moment.” —LitHub
“Just as Sally Rooney’s second novel perfectly captures the
intimacies of a young relationship, Brandon Taylor’s provocative
debut tests the boundaries put in place by a queer, black graduate
student.” —Bookpage
“Taylor is a writer who really gets the indignities of inhabiting a
human body, how the physical is so intimately tied to the
emotional. . . . Wallace is a heady mix of judgmental and
vulnerable, and it’s hard not to root for him even if he decides to
blow his life up.” —Vulture
“Brandon Taylor’s long-anticipated debut novel tackles timely
issues while introducing a compelling protagonist who will stick
with you long after the final page.” —Paste
“One of those books that perfectly captures a generational moment
while also feeling timeless.” —Sarah Neilson, Them
“Taylor’s perceptive, challenging exploration of the many kinds of
emotional costs will resonate with readers looking for complex
characters and rich prose.” —Publishers Weekly
“Breathlessly physical . . . steadily exciting and affecting . . .
[a] charged experience.” —Booklist (starred review)
“There is writing so exceptional, so intricately crafted that it
demands reverence. The intimate prose of Brandon Taylor’s exquisite
debut novel, Real Life, offers exactly that kind of writing. He
writes so powerfully about so many things—the perils of graduate
education, blackness in a predominantly white setting, loneliness,
desire, trauma, need. Wallace, the man at the center of this novel,
is written with nuance and tenderness and complexity. . . . Truly,
this is stunning work from a writer who wields his craft in
absolutely unforgettable ways.” —Roxane Gay
“The affections and disaffections of grad school life are shot
through with the searing experience of white racial presumption and
blindness in Brandon Taylor’s vivid and exacting Real Life.”
—Adam Haslett
“This book blew my head and heart off. For a debut novelist to
disentangle and rebraid intimacy, terror, and joy this finely seems
like a myth. But that, and so much more, is what Brandon Taylor has
done in Real Life. The future of the novel is here and Brandon
Taylor is that future’s name.”
—Kiese Laymon
“Real Life is a gorgeous work of art, and the introduction of a
singular new voice. Through Wallace, the book explores the tension
of a person trying to become himself while surrounded by people who
can see him only as their own projection. Even as Brandon Taylor
dives beneath the level of polite surface interaction and into the
ache of what people conceal from one another, or reveal only as
weaponry, his sharply rendered observations make it a true pleasure
to spend time in this book’s world.”
—Danielle Evans
“Real Life is one of the finest fiction debuts I've read in the
last decade—elegant and brutal, handled by an author whose
attention to the heart is unlike any other's. A magnificent
novel.”
—Esmé Weijun Wang
“A few summer days, a group of friends, a difficult
intimacy—with the simplest materials, Real Life reveals the knives
we pocket in good intentions, our constant, communal sabotage of
love. Brandon Taylor’s genius lies in the elaboration of ever more
revelatory gradations of feeling; in his extraordinary debut he
invents new tools for navigating the human dark in which we know
one another. He is a brilliant writer, and this is a beautiful
book.”
—Garth Greenwell
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