Real Life

Real life was not a joy to read but had me captivated from the start. Dark and lonely, I’ve never read anything that captured the feelings of loneliness and the feeling that your life isn’t quite right. Left me tender hearted especially after the ending.

There are some great parts in this book and it touches on a lot of important themes, but it is so overwritten that it gets annoying at some points.

Real Life is a campus coming-of-age story that follows Wallace, a black, queer biochemistry PhD student originally from the South, and a brief cross-section of his life as a grad student at a nondescript Midwestern university. His life is one of real and imposed isolation in what feels like purgatory between the trauma of his childhood and the unknowable expanses of the life that follows grad school.

The way the author portrays the micro aggressions Wallace faces over such a short period of time is as heartbreaking as it is frustrating, infuriating even. As someone who rarely, if ever, experiences that, it's a painful window into an accumulation of hurts. The perfunctory nature of Wallace's day, a head-down feeling, is stippled with big metaphysical dreads, and a beautifully-written but absolutely horrific unveiling of survived trauma.

I thought the book was wonderfully written and an exercise in empathy for what it's like to have a marginalized identity in academia.

It's a campus novel, Brandon Taylor's debut whipped up in just under 5 weeks - less created and more exhumed from his memories of being a young, gay, black man in a sciences PhD program at a midwestern university. An institute of higher learning, bastion of progressive politics, cherishing notions of inclusion and gesturing broadly to their own wokeness — that is also SUPER white. Like students sailing in their off hours white. And it's here under the crush of accumulating micro-aggressions, in a space that holds so much sway over you and your perceived notions of what your future can hold, that we find Wallace. Dismissed, made to feel small and unseen, and yet to give voice to that isn't an option. The evasions and justifications that flare into righteous indignation from white people when confronted make it easier to just shut down and move on.

All of this is happening in an academic space that Wallace has been working towards all his life but suddenly is feeling ambivalent about. What does it mean to have second thoughts when he's so close to finishing his PhD? What even is the world outside the walls of academia?

Of course this is only a glancing way into the novel but it's what stuck with me. Otherwise I admit I found it baggy, Taylor meandering around a burgeoning relationship, interpersonal drama amongst friends, and tennis. Wallace exists within this constant thrum of anxiety, a persistent discomfort that infuses every page expanding outward. Maybe it's the perfect manifestation of where he's at, an interstitial space seeking, but never quite finding, resolution. In that sense my frustrations could instead be read as recognition of how well Taylor captures the maddening inertia of academic life.

This novel is bleak. I did not enjoy reading this book and I hated every single character. And I wouldn't really recommend it, given how heavy and ugly the story is. But it also resonated and felt deeply true in that way that way that only fiction can. I'm having a hard time sorting out my feelings about my life from my feelings about the book and the one to five star rating system just doesn't really translate for me here.

There's been a swell of popularity in novels about toxic relationships in recent years. I don't think I'm the right audience because all the ones that receive the most praise completely fail to hook me. ([b:Fates and Furies 24612118 Fates and Furies Lauren Groff https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434750235l/24612118.SY75.jpg 43913972], yes I'm talking mostly about you!)This one at least brings in race and sexuality which is why I didn't give it a terrible rating, but for the most part, this is still the story of toxic people hooking up and having elite parties, feigning a belief that the world doesn't revolve around them, while all their actions scream, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!!!”An oversimplistic take? Perhaps. I still don't like it.

ruined

Not for me. Powerful but hard to read something saturated with pain and violence. Final chapter successfully broke my heart.

“Better to imagine his friends happy than to see their unhappiness up close. And unhappy they certainly would be - that has been the lesson this when, hasn't it? The misery of other people, the persistence of unhappiness, is perhaps all that connects them. Only the prospect of greater unhappiness keeps them within the circumscribed world.”

This book is one that sits heavy and makes you wish you could close your eyes and read at the same time. It's a painfully realistic and raw look at loneliness in a crowded, friend-filled life and the pain that comes with trying to live authentically. Taylor's work makes you realize the hindrance that can sometimes come with being self-aware. Many moments are written with beautiful clarity and intent. The lacking scenes are those that are paced questionably. Overall, a deeply hollowing look at where a life without self-esteem can lead.

Perfect take on the campus novel. Queerness and blackness exploded in novel, moving ways. I hope Wallace is doing alright.