A review by gsroney
The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
3.0
“But no one had a happy childhood. No one had a good life. Human pain existed in a vast supply, and people took from it like grain from a barn. There was pain for you and pain for you and pain for you - agony enough for everyone. The pain of his childhood was of such a common source that it embarrassed him. Perhaps it was this that he resented in the work of his peers. It wasn't that their lives were worse than his or that his life was better than theirs - it was that they all had the same pain, the same hurt, and he didn't think anyone should go around pretending it was something more than it was: the routine operation of the universe.
Small, common things - hurt feelings, cruel parents, strange and wearisome troubles."
"Loving people was hard. It was difficult sometimes to believe that they were good. It was hard to know them. But that didn't mean you could just go on without trying. What he believed was that love was more than just kindness and more than just giving people the things they wanted. Love was more than the parts of it that were easy and pleasurable. Sometimes love was trying to understand. Love was trying to get beyond what was hard.”
3.5 stars
This cast of characters, tangentially connected, all engaged in some form of art or industry, all precariously approaching life after graduation, all navigating sexually fluid relationships, are used by the author to examine the power and futility of art, and perhaps human connection or suffering. But frustratingly, it feels like there lacks an underlying thesis or conviction for what the novel is trying to say.
Small, common things - hurt feelings, cruel parents, strange and wearisome troubles."
"Loving people was hard. It was difficult sometimes to believe that they were good. It was hard to know them. But that didn't mean you could just go on without trying. What he believed was that love was more than just kindness and more than just giving people the things they wanted. Love was more than the parts of it that were easy and pleasurable. Sometimes love was trying to understand. Love was trying to get beyond what was hard.”
3.5 stars
This cast of characters, tangentially connected, all engaged in some form of art or industry, all precariously approaching life after graduation, all navigating sexually fluid relationships, are used by the author to examine the power and futility of art, and perhaps human connection or suffering. But frustratingly, it feels like there lacks an underlying thesis or conviction for what the novel is trying to say.