Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks and podcasts. Free Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins 4.1 (419 ratings) Try for 0.00 Pick 1 title (2 titles for Prime members) from our collection of bestsellers and new releases. Read more Print length 336 pages Language English Publisher Riverhead Books Publication date FebruDimensions 5.4 x 1.1 x 8. Once the news slips out in an unguarded moment, his sense that it was wiser to say nothing is vindicated by the gushing self-importance of a female friend (“I’m so sorry… God… I wish I could change it”) who bizarrely kisses him on the mouth by way of consolation, riling her fiance until he accepts the apparent necessity of the gesture – and leaving Wallace tired but unsurprised that his bereavement has somehow become all about them.Īlthough it’s mainly the injustice of Wallace’s story that commands our attention, his perspective on white middle-class mores also fuels plenty of low-key comedy: as when, fending off further questions about his father, he finds himself “summoning up a tremulous voice” to explain that, while he’s “just really unable to process”, “it’s been really helpful to have people in my life who really get me”, as he carefully composes his face into a “cheered if somewhat mournful” expression for their benefit. Real Life A Novel By: Brandon Taylor Narrated by: Kevin R. 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. The injustice of Wallace's story commands our attention but his perspective on white middle-class mores fuels plenty of low-key comedyĮspecially troubling to them is Wallace’s wish to keep private the recent death of his father. The novel’s ever-present crackle of jeopardy owes much to his weary recognition that whatever he says or does, he must above all consider the sensitivities of his supposedly benign white friends, who view him as a mirror in which to assess their own lives, often in self-congratulatory fashion. While his work life is more or less Kafkaesque – he soon finds himself branded a misogynist – the racism he faces isn’t limited to the lab.

Real Life by Brandon Taylor