The campus novel is having something of a resurgence in literary fiction and it finds a new and invigorating form in Real Life, the Booker-shortlisted debut novel by American author Brandon Taylor. Taking the events of one weekend as experienced by a young, gay Black man from Alabama, this novel is a stunning exploration of grief, racism, intimacy and desire.
Brandon Taylor
The protagonist of Real Life is Wallace, a graduate biochemistry student at a university in the Midwest who is working his way through the summer while quietly dealing with the death of his father some weeks ago. It’s an event that dredges up memories of the childhood traumas from which Wallace has never quite recovered, and which seep into every interaction he shares with his friends and lovers. Here, it serves as the emotional trigger for the weekend’s events – a disastrous dinner party, a tense run-in with a lab partner and so on. Fending off the hostile and often racist behaviour of his classmates and acquaintances, Wallace struggles to find his place and spirals into frustration and despair, while also seeking solace in a tumultuous relationship he has begun with a friend. These individual elements blend together in a perfect storm that eventually comes to a head, raising questions of how Wallace can possibly build a future for himself that will counteract the weight of his past.
As a novelist, Brandon Taylor is a keen observer who is willing to render his protagonist’s every thought and feeling in beautiful, detailed prose. Likewise, under Taylor’s hand, seemingly innocuous conversations are loaded with unsaid meaning, reflecting the hyper attentiveness with which Wallace moves through the world, attuned to every kind of situation which could cause him – a gay Black man – harm. Real Life is a novel that revels in its own perspective, speaking directly to readers like Wallace and allowing them to be seen in a genre that has traditionally not given them a place. In doing so, Taylor shuns the golden haze of nostalgia and privilege which characterises many campus novels to explore the human capacity for cruelty in an environment which is ironically intended to foster hope, creativity and progress.
With the Booker Prize due to be announced later this week, I would not be at all surprised to see Real Life crowned as this year’s winner. It’s a remarkable achievement in fiction writing that should by all rights mark the beginning of a long career for Brandon Taylor.
—Real Life by Brandon Taylor (Daunt Books Publishing) is out now.
Real Life
Wallace has spent his summer in the lab breeding a strain of microscopic worms, a slow and painstaking process. He is four years into a biochemistry degree at a lakeside Midwestern university, a life that's a world away from his childhood growing up in Alabama.
His father died a few weeks ago, but Wallace has not been home, and he hasn't told his friends - Miller, Yngve, Cole and Emma. For reasons of self-preservation, he has become used to keeping a wary distance even from those closest to him. Over the course of one blustery end-of-summer weekend...
About the Contributor
Olivia Fricot
Olivia Fricot (she/her) is Booktopia's Senior Content Producer and editor of the Booktopian blog. She has too many plants and not enough bookshelves, and you can usually find her reading, baking, or talking to said plants. She is pro-Oxford comma.
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