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A review by sophg82
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
3.0
There’s a feeling that I always think of as the emotional comedown, when you’ve just done something big like opened up about something or sent a vulnerable email or had a tough conversation and when it's all over you’re just there by yourself, sitting with it and with the reaction to it, waiting to see if things will change or stay the same. Real Life felt like a 300 page emotional comedown.
The pacing was quite interesting—the book is essentially written in real time over the course of one weekend. This worked for me sometimes. On one hand, it could feel reallly slow. On the other hand, when the characters were stuck in an uncomfortable moment (this happened...often!), you were IN it and had to experience it as long as the characters did. When it was done, you HAD to deal with the aftermath, because so did the characters who caused it, even when your instincts told you to get out of there. This was very effective, and very claustrophobic but that's kind of the point.
Also, this pace let Taylor really zoom in on every single micro interaction, analyzing it from every angle, going pages and pages between two lines of dialogue to just dig in on it. Again, this was a hit or miss for me—sometimes I think it’s really interesting to go that deep, but I don’t know if it’s something I want to read constantly.
The toughest part of this book was that all of Wallace’s friends were genuinely so awful, like SUCH terrible people, even the ones who I don’t think were supposed to be?? The people he was surrounded with were either cartoonishly racist or silent bystanders of said cartoonish racism (aka also racist). I understand there’s an unfortunate reality in that, but sometimes these interactions were written like they were super nuanced microaggressions but it was just like, SO macro. Very tough to read bc there was absolutely no reprieve! Everybody was SO awful (except for maybe Brigit but she was the one nonwhite friend lol) This book was really dark, which sometimes worked but sometimes kind of felt like darkness for darkness' sake.
The two things I thought this book did really well that resonated with me were the depiction of what it’s like day-to-day to be a person of color in a very white group, and the depiction of alienation/loneliness/estrangement from friends. I weirdly felt yanked back to my childhood dance studio days (on both the whiteness and alienation fronts) which I wasn’t really expecting but it's kind of a funny comparison to make because obviously this book is so much more intense. Generally, Taylor did a wonderful job articulating the feeling of both not quite belonging in the world, and having an idea of who DOES belong in the world. Some quotes I really liked:
"Why does it return to him now? All these miles away. These years. His previous life cut away like a cataract. Discarded. But here, found stuck to the bottom of his mind like a piece of garbage. Here. In this place."
"Miller and the girl from the rock-climbing group sitting side by side at dinner. Laughing. Eating their baked vegetables. Talking about what, Wallace wonders. The things people talk about when the world thinks they belong together. Who knows what affinities unlock between such people?"
"I knew even then that I was going to hell, that I couldn't make sense of the space in me that was supposed to be where God slept but in me was just a cavity like a tooth waiting to turn to rot, my soul a blackness, a wound gone sour."
The pacing was quite interesting—the book is essentially written in real time over the course of one weekend. This worked for me sometimes. On one hand, it could feel reallly slow. On the other hand, when the characters were stuck in an uncomfortable moment (this happened...often!), you were IN it and had to experience it as long as the characters did. When it was done, you HAD to deal with the aftermath, because so did the characters who caused it, even when your instincts told you to get out of there. This was very effective, and very claustrophobic but that's kind of the point.
Also, this pace let Taylor really zoom in on every single micro interaction, analyzing it from every angle, going pages and pages between two lines of dialogue to just dig in on it. Again, this was a hit or miss for me—sometimes I think it’s really interesting to go that deep, but I don’t know if it’s something I want to read constantly.
The toughest part of this book was that all of Wallace’s friends were genuinely so awful, like SUCH terrible people, even the ones who I don’t think were supposed to be?? The people he was surrounded with were either cartoonishly racist or silent bystanders of said cartoonish racism (aka also racist). I understand there’s an unfortunate reality in that, but sometimes these interactions were written like they were super nuanced microaggressions but it was just like, SO macro. Very tough to read bc there was absolutely no reprieve! Everybody was SO awful (except for maybe Brigit but she was the one nonwhite friend lol) This book was really dark, which sometimes worked but sometimes kind of felt like darkness for darkness' sake.
The two things I thought this book did really well that resonated with me were the depiction of what it’s like day-to-day to be a person of color in a very white group, and the depiction of alienation/loneliness/estrangement from friends. I weirdly felt yanked back to my childhood dance studio days (on both the whiteness and alienation fronts) which I wasn’t really expecting but it's kind of a funny comparison to make because obviously this book is so much more intense. Generally, Taylor did a wonderful job articulating the feeling of both not quite belonging in the world, and having an idea of who DOES belong in the world. Some quotes I really liked:
"Why does it return to him now? All these miles away. These years. His previous life cut away like a cataract. Discarded. But here, found stuck to the bottom of his mind like a piece of garbage. Here. In this place."
"Miller and the girl from the rock-climbing group sitting side by side at dinner. Laughing. Eating their baked vegetables. Talking about what, Wallace wonders. The things people talk about when the world thinks they belong together. Who knows what affinities unlock between such people?"
"I knew even then that I was going to hell, that I couldn't make sense of the space in me that was supposed to be where God slept but in me was just a cavity like a tooth waiting to turn to rot, my soul a blackness, a wound gone sour."