A review by tarrowood
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor

5.0

BT has to be one of my favorite contemporary writers. He writes with an honesty of emotion that is meant to strike multiple chords simultaneously. This newest instillation of his work circles around graduate students (and friends) not only trying to figure out their lives as they’re about to graduate, but also trying to figure out who they truly are. The plethora of voices that are all connected in some way exacerbates an image of knotted strings that are hard to disentangle.
BT pushes another idea that relationships with other humans are dirty and tangled; his characters time and time again love deeply, knowingly betray, assess the pain they have and cause, and love even deeper. It’s like they cause crashes on purpose to figure out not only how much damage they can cause, but if they’re capable of fixing it and feeling anything at all.