Real Life

This is a very troubling and challenging read. It's the sort of book that makes you feel uncomfortable, but very deliberately so. Real Life is on the surface a classic coming-of-age campus novel. However, the protagonist comes from a poor Southern U.S. town, is black and homosexual. With this backdrop, Real Life constitutes an examination of white privilege and an account of racism, both casual and more explicit. Real Life asks many difficult questions, those that people are typically reluctant to address: who is entitled to pain? How useful is an apology? Can sharing our feelings free us from them? The difficult subject matter sits awkwardly with the crude (sexual) actions of the protagonist, and contrasts too with the clinical prose used to describe the postgraduate chemistry lab where some of the action occurs. Perhaps Taylor's point is that "real life" is just an elusive concept, particularly when you feel like part of an experiment (an outsider seeking affirmation) in the petri dish of life. The sort of work you may enjoy more in retrospect.

By Brandon Taylor