I would be lying if I said this was a pleasant book to read. REAL LIFE by Brandon Taylor shortlisted for The Booker Prize does not cut its readers any slack. It poses questions bluntly and counts on its reader to become uncomfortable and think over it. It expects its audience to be better and be kind.
Unfolding over a single weekend, it is about Wallace, a gay black man, a postgraduate student in a midwestern town. Wallace’s dad has recently passed away, and as much as he tries, he cannot escape his past, especially this weekend with his friends getting to know about his father’s death and uncomfortable truths coming out. He finds himself in this new-found friendship with his mate Miller who comes bearing his share of issues that complement Wallace’s. It is while sharing their pasts that they find out how completely disastrous and yet so perfect their coming together is.
Wallace has had an unspeakable childhood. He has parental issues and that is peeled leaf after leaf, slowly, until his soul is made bare. We follow his struggles facing racism, homophobia, loneliness, clinical depression, and suicidal thoughts. All of these are only accentuated by his traumatic past. Despite having problematic relationships all his life, he finds solace in Miller’s company, a guy who has cold-shouldered him, for as long as he can remember but has recently come to a truce and found common ground with him. He is always calculating and is walking on eggshells around him unsure whether he should get attached to him given his previous record.
I have a lot of issues with this book and I don’t know how much I can talk about it without spoiling. The rage that is building within Wallace, the calm before the storm gets the most focus, how he suppresses everything and just accepts how society, his friends, his partners treat him. He has been mistreated all his life and he doesn’t even perceive it anymore. It doesn’t offend him now. The book maintains a very empowering tone throughout but changes something very fundamental in its climax. I did not agree with the questionable choices that Wallace makes in the end.
REAL LIFE needs to be read in spite of its flaws. It is a mixed bag of raw emotions, and it refuses to be subtle about it. Brandon’s prose is beautiful, and that is one of the primary reasons you should pick it up if not for its otherwise okay story. It is a real treat to your eyes and olfactory nerves because he does not leave any color or smell undescribed. It is as beautiful as it gets. You can literally breathe the summer air while reading this. I hope you will pick it up and enjoy reading at least for the sake of the Booker panel.
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.
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