A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice. A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend--and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends--some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defenses, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community. Real Life is a gut punch of a novel, a story that asks if it's ever really possible to overcome our private wounds and buried histories--and at what cost.

Praise for Real Life:

“[A] stunning debut . . . Taylor proves himself to be a keen observer of the psychology of not just trauma, but its repercussions. . . . There is a delicacy in the details of working in a lab full of microbes and pipettes that dances across the pages like the feet of a Cunningham dancer: pure, precise poetry.” —Jeremy O. Harris, The New York Times Book Review

“Equal parts captivating, erotic, smart and vivid . . . [rendered] with tenderness and complexity, from the first gorgeous sentence of his book to its very last . . . Taylor is also tackling loneliness, desire and—more than anything—finding purpose, meaning and happiness in one’s own life.” **—*Time 

*“[Real Life is] a sophisticated character study of someone squaring self-preservation with a duty to tolerate people who threaten it. The book teems with passages of transfixing description, and perhaps its greatest asset is the force of Wallace’s isolation, which Taylor conveys with alien strangeness.” ***—The New Yorker *

****“Real Life is a tender, deeply felt, perfectly paced novel about solitude and society, sexuality and race. It explores what the past means and, with brilliance and sympathy, dramatizes the intricacies of love and grief.” —Colm Tóibín

****“A blistering coming of age story. . . [Taylor] is so deft at portraying the burdens that befall young queer people of color and the forces that often hamper true connection.” —O: The Oprah Magazine

“Brandon Taylor emerges as a powerhouse . . . . In tender, intimate and distinctive writing, Taylor explores race, sexuality and desire with a cast of unforgettable characters.” —****Newsweek

**“A pleasure . . . So well written I felt like I was watching the events, rather than just reading the prose.” —NPR
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“[A] classical ideal of a novel . . . Every scene, every dialogue, fits perfectly over a hall-of-famer first sentence[,] delicate interlocking layers of story that build satisfyingly up and out around Wallace, his father, and his friends.” —The Paris Review

“A perfect, meditative read.” – USA TODAY

****“Both calm and quiet and furiously dramatic, internal and external, Real Life moves like, well, real life—but with a key difference. Real life itself can be super boring. But Real Life . . . is utterly captivating all the way through.” —Isaac Fitzgerald, The Today Show ****

*******“Taylor’s vivid characterization is punishingly effective; his essayistic insights into cultural dynamics and their impact hold searing power. Erotic and ambiguous [and] hard to shake.” *****************– ***Entertainment Weekly

*****“One of the best debut novels in recent memory. . . . [Real Life] leaves the reader spinning. In a good way.” **—Shondaland

*“Brandon Taylor reimagines the dusty expectations of the campus novel . . . Taylor is a brilliant and eloquent prose-stylist who effortlessly conveys entire lives in brief flashes of narrative insight. Most impressively, he writes deftly about the blurring of attraction, friendship, and grief.” —Alex McElroy, BuzzFeed News

******“Shattering.” *—**********Elle

**********“With the rigour of the laboratory, Taylor wields scalpel-like prose, putting human behaviours under the microscope . . . precise and masterly.” ******—****************Financial Times

*“What Taylor does next will be worth watching.” *–The Washington Post

**********“A novel of quiet, startling power.” **********—***Harper’s Bazaar 

“Taylor avoids cliches around campus living and instead—through various interpersonal and institutional scuffles—offers a look at the relentless erosion of dignity many students of color experience at college. —SELF****************

*************“Psychologically compelling, incisively satirical, told in a muted style that nevertheless accesses a full emotional range, this is a brilliant book, worthy of a wide audience.” —***The Guardian

**“A profound look at the depths of desire, knowledge and prejudice . . . a refreshing take on the traditional campus novel.” —**VICE

“Taylor’s debut is of a rare and vital sort. . . . Taylor’s grip on the subtle movements of the human heart and psyche is masterful.” —Huffington Post

“Astonishingly accomplished . . . Even at its darkest moments, Real Life is a piercingly beautiful book. In tracing the fault-lines that rip through Wallace’s emotional world, Brandon Taylor has written a truly exquisite story of love, sex, death, and microbes that is both intimate and expansive.” *—**Times Literary Supplement

***“Explosive . . . [Real Life] gets so much right.” —The Point

****“The writer who came most to mind as I read Real Life was James Baldwin, especially the erotic Baldwin, attuned to social pressure and violence, and deeply committed to the power, the uneasy force, of sex. . . . The exquisite tension in Taylor’s litany of physical details underscores the harshness that threatens the scene’s placid surface. . . . The details here have the savor of the real.” *** *—Bookforum

*“Real Life is a great American novel, a great college novel, a great summer novel, a great queer novel, a great novel of life as it has always been lived by young people waiting for their 'real life' to begin, and just a really, really great novel. . . . It's the best novel I’ve read this year.'” —***Dazed

*“Brandon Taylor’s Real Life doubles as a great grad student novel (most attempts trade in stereotypes; this offers the real, complicated, dark thing) and a great, positively Persuasion-like novel about the relationship between consciousness and embodiment.” *—Commonweal

*“A poignant, exacting story. . . . Taylor is an extraordinary cartographer of Wallace’s loneliness, crafting a finely wrought story of academia, intimacy, and identity.” —*Esquire

“Real Life* asks questions many of us shy from: Who is entitled to pain? How useful is an apology? Can sharing our feelings free us from them? . . . Amid the flurry of new novel…