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A review by nuraitheodora
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Set over the course of a weekend, Brandon Taylor’s Real Life follows Wallace, a young Black gay man getting a biochemistry graduate degree, and his interactions with friends and co-workers. His group of friends (who are all white) are in the same field as he is.
At the beginning, Wallace as a character feels a bit detached from his surroundings and what is happening around and to him. Even when he is in the company of his friends, he feels lonely - there is a sad undertone to his thoughts that doesn’t really go away. His father has died recently, and because of his complicated relationship with his father, he isn’t experiencing grief in the way his friends expect of him. He can also be petty, angry, and be kind of vengeful at times, frustrations bubbling up and lashing out at people. I really liked Wallace as a character, because he is flawed and vulnerable and angry and depressed and as a reader, you just want to give him a big hug. It is clear that Wallace is very unhappy and depressed, and throughout the novel he questions whether he wants to stay where he is — at the university, studying worms (or whatever I truly don’t know) — or if he wants to leave. Taylor does a great job of building the little bubble that is university life, how it is, in a way, a parody of ‘real life’, this contained world. And the ‘real world’ can seem scary and unfamiliar from that bubble — even if you’re not happy in that bubble either, at least it is a familiar unhappiness.
The scenes between Wallace and Miller were written so well and vulnerable — the complexities of Wallace feeling insecure and then feeling confident, getting the upper hand on Miller, were really well done and nuanced. These interactions also say a lot about Wallace as a character and what he thinks of himself: sometimes he can be so caught up in what effect others have on him and how he worries that he’s too much for people, that he completely misses the impact he can have on others, that his actions can make others insecure or feel some type of way. These moments especially felt so relatable and real.
The commentary the book makes about racism, what Wallace calls “the shadow pain” —both the microaggressions and complicit silence Wallace experiences from his friends and supervisor, and the overt racism from one of his lab partners — felt really painful and confrontational in a good way. There is one scene in the book, when Wallace and his friends are having dinner, and someone says something racist and cruel to him, and nobody says anything, and Wallace thinks about their silence and how little that moment means to them in comparison to his experience.
“Silence is their way of getting by, because if they are silent long enough, then this moment of minor discomfort will pass for them, will fold down into the landscape of the evening as if it never happened. Only Wallace will remember it. That’s the frustrating part. Wallace is the only one for whom this is a humiliation. He breathes out through the agony of it, through the pressure in his chest.”
Brandon Taylor mentioned on twitter that there are influences of both Jane Austen (especially Persuasion, which is my favourite Austen) and Virginia Woolf - which is I definitely noticed a bit but would be interested in reading more of from someone who’s done more research on this.
I feel like the writing — meant to resemble the distanced, factual nature of Wallace’s academic work — represents on a smaller scale some of the struggles Wallace has over the course of the weekend: this tendency or urge he has to stay at a distance from his surroundings, his friends, his fellow students. At some points in the novel, he opens up, and the writing opens up as well.
Overall, I thought this was such a compelling, well-written story and I’m looking forward to reading Brandon Taylor’s short-story collection that comes out later this year!
At the beginning, Wallace as a character feels a bit detached from his surroundings and what is happening around and to him. Even when he is in the company of his friends, he feels lonely - there is a sad undertone to his thoughts that doesn’t really go away. His father has died recently, and because of his complicated relationship with his father, he isn’t experiencing grief in the way his friends expect of him. He can also be petty, angry, and be kind of vengeful at times, frustrations bubbling up and lashing out at people. I really liked Wallace as a character, because he is flawed and vulnerable and angry and depressed and as a reader, you just want to give him a big hug. It is clear that Wallace is very unhappy and depressed, and throughout the novel he questions whether he wants to stay where he is — at the university, studying worms (or whatever I truly don’t know) — or if he wants to leave. Taylor does a great job of building the little bubble that is university life, how it is, in a way, a parody of ‘real life’, this contained world. And the ‘real world’ can seem scary and unfamiliar from that bubble — even if you’re not happy in that bubble either, at least it is a familiar unhappiness.
The scenes between Wallace and Miller were written so well and vulnerable — the complexities of Wallace feeling insecure and then feeling confident, getting the upper hand on Miller, were really well done and nuanced. These interactions also say a lot about Wallace as a character and what he thinks of himself: sometimes he can be so caught up in what effect others have on him and how he worries that he’s too much for people, that he completely misses the impact he can have on others, that his actions can make others insecure or feel some type of way. These moments especially felt so relatable and real.
The commentary the book makes about racism, what Wallace calls “the shadow pain” —both the microaggressions and complicit silence Wallace experiences from his friends and supervisor, and the overt racism from one of his lab partners — felt really painful and confrontational in a good way. There is one scene in the book, when Wallace and his friends are having dinner, and someone says something racist and cruel to him, and nobody says anything, and Wallace thinks about their silence and how little that moment means to them in comparison to his experience.
“Silence is their way of getting by, because if they are silent long enough, then this moment of minor discomfort will pass for them, will fold down into the landscape of the evening as if it never happened. Only Wallace will remember it. That’s the frustrating part. Wallace is the only one for whom this is a humiliation. He breathes out through the agony of it, through the pressure in his chest.”
Brandon Taylor mentioned on twitter that there are influences of both Jane Austen (especially Persuasion, which is my favourite Austen) and Virginia Woolf - which is I definitely noticed a bit but would be interested in reading more of from someone who’s done more research on this.
I feel like the writing — meant to resemble the distanced, factual nature of Wallace’s academic work — represents on a smaller scale some of the struggles Wallace has over the course of the weekend: this tendency or urge he has to stay at a distance from his surroundings, his friends, his fellow students. At some points in the novel, he opens up, and the writing opens up as well.
Overall, I thought this was such a compelling, well-written story and I’m looking forward to reading Brandon Taylor’s short-story collection that comes out later this year!