PTW Pick - Real Life
Penn Book Center, Philadelphia
Real Life is the debut novel from Brandon Taylor that ripped me apart. And I’m not sure if I was put back together by the end. The book is set over a weekend at a college in the Midwest where his character, Wallace, is in a Ph.D. program for biochemistry. Translation: a southern, Black, queer man in a sea of white faces.
In the book, Taylor doesn’t hold back from all the nuance this type of position presents. The microaggressions of white folks that claim to be friends and the moments when we choose to be quiet in order to keep our peace. Much of it, Taylor knows all too well from his own personal experiences. However, at his tour stop in Philadelphia, he explained he also differed in many ways from his main character. He also discussed the idea of “Real Life” during grad school—how you’re suspended in a sense of false adulthood. As a grad student, you are essentially an adult but, somehow, not really at all. The characters make reference to this on more than one occasion.
Wallace has a lot going on, to say the least. We see him struggling with his experiments in lab likely at the hands of a jealous schoolmate. He’s trying to manage the expectations of his advisor. He’s dealing with the death of a father with whom he had a complicated relationship. Wallace’s past is riddled with abuse and violence and we see him trying to work through those things while managing his current life. The most troubling part for me in this was his relationship with his “straight” friend Miller and how, in my opinion, it repeated this cycle of trauma. And maybe that was the point, but I wanted more for Wallace.
The book is kind of sad, with fleeting moments of victory like when Wallace spilled all the beans at a dinner party about his two friends’ relationship trouble. It was all kinds of messy and petty but as a reader, you wanted Wallace to stand up for himself in some way and while [name of friend] ended up a casualty, sometimes it’s just like that. Hit after hit, you wondered when he was just going to explode and well, he did.
It’s clear that Taylor has a skill at translating his observations into stunning prose. The book is a beautiful literary exploration. He brings you to the lake and with this odd group of friends placed together based on their circumstance of schooling, and I think we’ve all been there. There was this subtlety of them being frenemies. His nemesis in the lab was a bit odd. I wanted her to have a little more reasoning behind her vitriol, but maybe that was just up for our determination. Whether it was because Wallace was Black or queer or smart, who knows?
I found it to be a stellar debut. A page-turner for sure. But I couldn’t get over my disappointment for Wallace. And maybe that was the point. Maybe we’ve gotten way too used to books with cheesy happy endings—and that’s just not real life.
Ashley M. Coleman is a writer and freelancer based in Philadelphia. Her work has been featured in The Cut, Apartment Therapy, and more. She’s writing her first novel and tweeting about it in the process. Follow along @ashleymcoleman_
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