Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - The Late Americans

In The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor follows a cast of graduate students and those in their immediate orbit in the college town Iowa City. In the opening chapter, we meet Seamus, a white, working-class poetry graduate student who hasn't submitted a poem to his seminar in months because he's paralyzed by all his ideas of what Poetry (with a capital P) should be. Instead, he inwardly, then outwardly derides the work of his classmates as he tries to come up with an idea for the his "great" poem. Seamus also works as a cook in a hospice kitchen, where he has a rough sexual experience with an older man whose father is a resident. We next meet Fyodor and Timo, a couple who are both mixed-race Black men but come from different backgrounds: Timo is an "irritatingly middle class" graduate student while Fyodor is from a working-class background and works at a meatpacking plant, which causes strife with Timo, who is a vegetarian. We also meet another couple of disparate class circumstances, Goran and Ivan, the latter a former dancer who is now working in finance but making amateur pornography on the side. Then comes Fatima, Noah, and Daw, all dance graduate students, and another POV character, Bea, with a poignant story about loneliness.

This is not a plot-driven novel, so if that is something that is important to you, look elsewhere. I, however, love a good character-driven novel where the main thing that is happening is the internal monologue of the characters, and although this is my first time reading Brandon Taylor, I understand that this is a common thread in his works.

There are many things this novel does incredibly, the greatest of which is the depth of characters that Taylor creates. I loved sweet Fyodor and Bea, and ended up feeling very invested in Seamus, who I had immediately pegged as an asshole. And at the very end, Taylor gives us more about Daw, who just made my heart break a little more. And the writing was beautiful-- there are so many sentences and passages that I've underlined because they resonated with me or moved me. I will admit, though, that, despite the well-drawn characters and beautiful writing, something about this felt a little too disjointed, making it hard to completely lose myself in it.

Full of ruminations on class, race, sexuality, academia, art, passion, and love, Brandon Taylor's The Late Americans is arresting and beautiful despite feeling stretched thin at times. It makes me excited to check out his backlist, and I recommend that readers of character-driven literary fiction check this one out when it comes out on May 23.

*I received an advanced review copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thanks to the publisher for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.*

Content Warnings

More...