Real Life
A Novel
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Real Life
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Narrated by:
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Kevin R. Free
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By:
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Brandon Taylor
About this listen
2020 Booker Prize short-listed
2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize long-listed
2021 Lambda Literary Award short-listed
2020 National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize short-listed
2021 VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize short-listed
2021 Young Lions Award short-listed
A Finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the NYPL Young Lions Award, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award
"A blistering coming of age story." (O: The Oprah Magazine)
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Public Library, Vanity Fair, Elle, NPR, The Guardian, The Paris Review, Harper's Bazaar, Financial Times, Huffington Post, BBC, Shondaland, Barnes & Noble, Vulture, Thrillist, Vice, Self, Electric Literature, and Shelf Awareness
A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice.
Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. 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 over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.
Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.
©2020 Brandon Taylor (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"[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)
What listeners say about Real Life
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Nicky D
- 15-11-20
Beautiful writing
An author to watch for me. The writing is gorgeous and packs an emotional punch. My first time hearing this narrator too who blew me away - one of the best for sure. The characters are superbly drawn and the dialogue is spot on. But the story itself lacked real jeopardy for me, and whilst the brief love affair sinks into predictable violence, I never really felt frightened for my man. Not sure I would have finished it if it weren’t for the narrator, whose performance was wonderful. I will look out for more by this author as he shows much promise.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Alcidae
- 11-04-21
Beautiful, well read story
This is about subtle biases, marginalisation, repressed trauma, making one's own narrative and being black, gay, less than perfectly slim in a Midwestern university. Taking place over the course of one weekend the story is delicately crafted and the relationship dynamics finely related. Quite sad although never heavy. The protagonist allows a relatively rare insight into social dynamics which makes it very interesting and engrossing.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Waggy From Derby
- 08-01-21
felt the story was not complete
I wanted more from this book, I'm left frustrated about Wallace's job, how it turned out and about his relationship with miller
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Anrol95
- 01-02-24
Not a fan of the narrator
Did not hugely rate the narrator of this story. Distracting at times rather than adding to the story or bringing characters alive.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 08-05-21
Pretentious crap
Well that’s 9 hours of my life I won’t get back. Absolute drivel. No real storyline, just miserable people whining and navel gazing. Utter rubbish.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- august year
- 19-06-21
Garbage
Waste of time. Boring and the lab scenes made to give us a clue to the clever academic’s mind are banal: who cares about changing a slide under a microscope? Needless and distracting details that have little to do with the already weak story.
Makes me very suspicious about the race reviews. Should have read the Amazon 2 star reviews- very accurate.
This book was an exercise in how to alienate the reader and I would recommend it if you suffer from insomnia- it will put you into a deep slumber.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 02-03-23
Disappointed.
Oh my word, I was so hooked until Chapter 5 or 6. Then it just got very, very repetitive. The characters are so immature and even the narrator sounded like he was tired of them!
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