The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! đ
snoodle_poodle's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
Graphic: Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Racial slurs, Racism, Homophobia, Sexual assault, Violence, Child abuse, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Grief, Hate crime, Rape, Fatphobia, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Alcoholism, and Blood
megelizabeth's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
5.0
I always encourage checking trigger warnings, but with this one I would do so even more heavily than usual - there is a LOT of really heavy content in this one and it's definitely one to only go into if you really feel you're in a good place to handle it. If you do feel able to cope, though, I truly cannot recommend this enough.
Graphic: Religious bigotry, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Animal cruelty, Homophobia, Racism, Child abuse, Death, Animal death, Rape, Blood, and Racial slurs
Moderate: Vomit and Death of parent
Minor: Cancer and Ableism
mo_bookshelves's review against another edition
2.75
Graphic: Child abuse and Rape
Moderate: Gaslighting and Eating disorder
Minor: Death of parent
alicechak's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Death of parent, Child abuse, and Adult/minor relationship
mourtarymaggots's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Child abuse, Death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexual violence, Alcohol, Blood, Body shaming, Adult/minor relationship, Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexual assault
sfx_naike's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Sexual violence, Toxic friendship, Domestic abuse, Rape, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Racism, Homophobia, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Cursing, Classism, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, and Abandonment
bookishmillennial's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
Premise:
- contemporary adult, dark academia, literary fiction
- third-person limited POV of main character
- Wallace, gay, fat, and Black graduate student in biochemistry in a Midwestern city, navigates being the only Black person in his group of friends, all while ruminating if he wants to remain in the graduate programÂ
- He begins a quiet romance/friends-with-benefits situation with one of his other friends, who is not out yetÂ
- He endures constant covert and overt acts of racism from his friends and his labmatesÂ
- He shares his past and grapples with his father's passingÂ
- cw: rape, rape of a minor, racism, gaslighting, classism, death of a parent, homophobia, infidelity, white people who claim they are allies yet never speak the fuck up (they absolutely posted their little black square in 2020 and proceeded to change nothing in their day-to-day lives)Â
Thoughts:
I'm not a fat, Black, gay man in a STEM program in the Midwest. However, as a small, AAPI, bi/pan woman who works in academia (in a STEM department), I hate to tell you that though this book is fiction, it rang sooooooo true. I cringed, I got upset, I put down the book at times. It hit too close to home as far as how the "allies" around us act and do not ever try to regulate the acts of others. Wallace chose to keep quiet, keep to himself, and to immediately admit wrongdoing whenever he was accused of it because he had to. It's what society taught him was needed of him in order to survive in the world.
Do not expect to love these characters! They are garbage! They are not characters -- they are representative of so many real life people I know. People who posted BLM all over their instagram pages in 2020, and have resumed regularly scheduled programming since. These are people who think "kindness" and toxic positivity can solve all of the world's problems. My RBF was strong reading some of these characters' responses to Wallace, in trying to justify the way they treat him, all while he has to sit there are take it. It was devastating, infuriating, and mind-boggling how they didn't have one bit of self-awareness or courage to stand up for their friend, ever.
Brandon Taylor really just dropped the mic with this book. It's heavy and it's heart breaking but it's real. So the title is wildly fitting. Real life? I believe it.Â
Quotations that stood out to me:
Like Wallace and their other friends, they had all come to this Midwestern city to pursue graduate studies in biochemistry. Their class had been the first small one in quite some time, and the first in more than three decades to include a black person. In his less generous moments, Wallace thought these two things related, that a narrowing, a reduction in the number of applicants, had made his admission possible.
It was not the first time his plates had become contaminated or moldy. This had been common in his first year, before his technique and cleanliness improved. Before he knew to be vigilant, cautious. He was different now. He knew enough to keep his strains safe.
Laughing because it was funny to him in a way that was difficult to clarify. Like a joke leaping unexpectedly from an entirely random arrangement of circumstances. In the past few months, for the first time in his four years of graduate school, he had begun to feel that he might be at the edge of something. H
âWe love a martyr,â Vincent said. âI suppose thatâs what weâll be talking about tonight. Our Lady of Perpetual Lab.â
He was unhappy, and for the first time in his life, that unhappiness did not seem entirely necessary. Sometimes he yearned to trust this impulse, to leap out of his life and into the vast, incalculable void of the world.
The words fell out of him like the exhalation of some hot, dense space inside him, and when he was done talking, he looked up, thinking that no one had really been paying attention. Thatâs how it was. He talked and people drifted in and out of concentration. But when he looked up, Wallace saw that each of them was looking at him with what seemed to be tender shock.
He smiled because he was not sure how to meet someoneâs sympathy for him. It always seemed to him that when people were sad for you, they were sad for themselves, as if your misfortune were just an excuse for them to feel what it was they wanted to feel. Sympathy was a kind of ventriloquism.
âItâs like that. It always hurts worse than you expect, even if it doesnât do any real harm.â
Things moved through the group in this way, information sliding around as if through an invisible circulatory system, carried on veins made of text messages, emails, and whispered conversations at parties.
How long had it been since Wallace had slept well and easily? How long had it been since he had felt beyond the worldâs grasp?
âWhat I know is that it doesnât matter if you didnât know them or they didnât know you. My mom was a real bitch. She was mean and hateful and a liar and spent my whole life tearing me down. But when she died, I really . . . I donât know, your parents arenât people until theyâre suffering. They arenât people until theyâre gone.â
People can be unpredictable in their cruelty.
Strange that he has become a person who kisses. The coppery taste of shame at betraying oneself. Nausea, as if he must now explain this change to some higher power, some greater authority. He is surprised at himself, at his traitorous body. His mind a tumult, hazy and dark shapes opening, turning upon themselves.
It wasnât the world outside that he had needed to drown out, then, but the world inside, the interior of the house, which had always seemed so much wilder and stranger to him than anything he found walking alone in the woods.
He managed not forgiveness, but erasure. They seem so much the same to him.
The unfair thing, he thinks, is that she is afforded this moment to vent herself. She will be fine. She will be all right. She is gifted, and he is merely Wallace. None of this is fair. None of this is good, he knows. But he also knows that the point is not fairness. The point is not to be treated fairly or well. The point is to get your work done. The point is results. He could say something to her, but at the end of the day, it doesnât matter because no one is going to do his work for him. No one is going to say, Well, Wallace, itâs okay if you donât have your part of the data. You were ...more
The most unfair part of it, Wallace thinks, is that when you tell white people that something is racist, they hold it up to the light and try to discern if you are telling the truth. As if they can tell by the grain if something is racist or not, and they always trust their own judgment. Itâs unfair because white people have a vested interest in underestimating racism, its amount, its intensity, its shape, its effects. They are the fox in the henhouse.
She spoke as though she were bestowing blessings. Bestowing beneficence. Bestowing irrefutable grace. She spoke as though she were saving him. What could he say? What could he do? Nothing. Except to work. And now the work has been turned on him. His work is an insult to them. She hates him because he works, but he works only so that people might not hate him and might not rescind his place in the world. He works only so that he might get by in life on whatever he can muster. None of it will save him, he sees now. None of it can save him.
How can Cole, of all people, doubt himself, who he is, when the person he presents to the world is so carefully constructed? Itâs only now, even, that Wallace is aware of a certain puckering at the seams, a hint of construction showing through. Itâs only now that he realizes that all along, Cole has perhaps been smiling with teeth to hide a grimace.
It is why he does not trust memory. Memory sifts. Memory lifts. Memory makes due with what it is given. Memory is not about facts. Memory is an inconsistent measurement of the pain in oneâs life.
What Roman is referring to is instead a deficiency of whiteness, a lack of some requisite sameness. This deficiency cannot be overcome. The fact is, no matter how hard he tries or how much he learns or how many skills he masters, he will always be provisional in the eyes of these people, no matter how they might be fond of him or gentle with him.
Emma puts her head on Wallaceâs shoulder, but she wonât say anything either, canât bring herself to. No one does. No one ever does. Silence is their way of getting by, because if they are silent long enough, then this moment of minor discomfort will pass for them, will fold down into the landscape of the evening as if it never happened. Only Wallace will remember it. Thatâs the frustrating part. Wallace is the only one for whom this is a humiliation. He breathes out through the agony of it, through the pressure in his chest.
They are always laughing. This is it, Wallace thinks. Thatâs how they get by. Silence and laughter, silence and laughter, switch and swing. The way one glides through this life without having to think about anything hard. He still feels the sting of embarrassment, but it has ebbed.
Zoe seems nice, but in the way that white people are nice right before they perform some new role in the secret machinery that ruins black peopleâs lives.
It is a deflection, and a bad one at that, which annoys Wallace. A deflection out of kindness. A kindness that seeks to encompass all futures, that asserts its constancy regardless of what might come.
Kindness is a debt, Wallace thinks. Kindness is something owed and something repaid. Kindness is an obligation.
âI donât know if itâs good. Sometimes, I think that this is all Iâve ever wanted. Good research. Steady. Learning all the time. Other days Iâm just miserable and want to cry. We all are, I think. In our way. Weâre all fucking miserable in this place. But then, to actually hear it. Itâs like somebody said something rude during church.â âIs this church?â âHush, you know what I mean. I felt like, Oh no, oh no. First, I wanted to hug you. Because Iâve had days like that. Then I wanted to strangle you so youâd hush and not make us all think about it.â But the difference, Wallace wants to say, is ...more
There were days in all their lives when things went wrong and they were forced to ask themselves if they wanted to go on. Decisions were made every day about what sort of life they wanted, and they always answered the same: Only this, only this. But that was the misery of trying to become something, misery that you could put up with because it was native to the act of trying. But there are other kinds of misery, the misery that comes from other people.
He could say this. It seems possible. But he knows what will happen. Wallace rolls his shoulders. If he makes a point of this, Emma will shake her head. She will refuse it. She will say that heâs pitying himself, that heâs not special. That he is not alone in his feeling of inadequacy. And this is perhaps a little true. And itâs that small truth of it that makes it dangerous to him. They do not understand that for them it will get better, while for him the misery will only change shape. She will say, Get over yourself, Wally, and she will smile and put her arms around his shoulders, and she ...more
There will always be good white people who love him and want the best for him but who are more afraid of other white people than of letting him down. It is easier for them to let it happen and to triage the wound later than to introduce an element of the unknown into the situation. No matter how good they are, no matter how loving, they will always be complicit, a danger, a wound waiting to happen. There is no amount of loving that will ever bring Miller closer to him in this respect. There is no amount of desire. There will always remain a small space between them...
That is the really wonderful thing about living in a place to which you are not connected. It cannot lay a claim on who you were before you arrived there, and all anyone knows of you is what you tell them. It was possible to become a different version of himself in the Midwest, a version without a family and without a past, made up entirely as he saw fit.
âYou are so determined to be unknowable.â
âWeâre always unknowable.â
There were storms every dayâthunder and lightningâand I learned to make myself so still I thought I might slide out of my body, thought I might then and there die, cease to be, fold back into the next life as if it were a comfortable bed, so perfectly parallel had I drawn this life to the next. Even then I was spotting and waiting, watching the world pass me by in repeated patterns, the impression of lightning on the window, its shadow thrown long behind it.
There comes a time when you have to stop being who you were, when you have to let the past stay where it is, frozen and impossible. You have to let it go if youâre going to keep moving, if youâre going to survive, because the past doesnât need a future.
Perhaps friendship is really nothing but controlled cruelty. Maybe thatâs all theyâre doing, lacerating each other and expecting kindness back. Or maybe itâs just Wallace, lacking friends, lacking an understanding of how friendship works. But he understands cruelty. He understands violence, even if friendship is beyond him.
âWhat did you mean, then?â That he wants to be alone. That he does not want to speak to anyone. That he does not want to be around anyone. That the world has worn him down. That he would like nothing more than to slip out of his life and into the next. That he is terrified, afraid. That he wants to lie down here and never move again. What he means is that he does not know what he wants, only that it is not this, the way forward paved with words theyâve already said and things theyâve already done. What he wants is to break it all open and try again.
Better to imagine his friends happy than to see their unhappiness up close. And unhappy they certainly would beâthat has been the lesson this weekend, hasnât 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 of graduate school.
Itâs not even that he wants to be themâthough queer desire has this feature baked in, so better to say itâs not just that he wants to be them. He wants to be not himself. He wants to be not depressed. He wants to be not anxious. He wants to be well. He wants to be good.
The truly awful thing about beauty is that it reminds us of our limits. Beauty is a kind of unrelenting cruelty. It takes the truth, hones it to a terrifying keenness, and uses it to slice us to the bone.
Cruelty, Wallace thinks, is really just the conduit of pain. It conveys pain from one place to anotherâfrom the place of highest concentration to the place of lowest concentration, in the same way heat flows. It is a delivery system, as in the way that certain viruses convey illness, disease, irreparable harm. Theyâre all infected with pain, hurting each other.
Is this all his life is meant to be, the accumulation of other peopleâs pain? Their assorted tragedies?
But to stay in graduate school, to stay where he is, means to accept the futility of his efforts to blend in seamlessly with those around him. It is a life spent swimming against the gradient, struggling up the channel of other peopleâs cruelty. It grates him to consider this, the shutting away of the part of him that now throbs and writhes like a new organ that senses so keenly the limitations of his life. Stay here and suffer, or exit and drown, he thinks.
This is perhaps why people get together in the first place. The sharing of time. The sharing of the responsibility of anchoring oneself in the world. Life is less terrible when you can just rest for a moment, put everything down and wait without having to worry about being washed away. People take each otherâs hands and they hold on as tight as they can, they hold on to each other and to themselves, and when they let go, they can because they know that the other person will not.
Graphic: Homophobia, Child abuse, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Gaslighting, Death of parent, Rape, Toxic friendship, Fatphobia, Racism, Racial slurs, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
stierwood's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Grief, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Racism, Mental illness, Homophobia, Death, Child abuse, Alcoholism, Abandonment, Rape, Pedophilia, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Sexual violence, Racial slurs, Hate crime, Emotional abuse, Alcohol, Toxic friendship, Suicidal thoughts, and Physical abuse
slintangel's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Sexual assault, Rape, Death of parent, Mental illness, Sexual violence, and Racism
Moderate: Child abuse
luce98's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Racism, Physical abuse, and Racial slurs
Moderate: Eating disorder, Child abuse, and Death of parent
Minor: Homophobia, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence