Review for Real Life: Nauseous Grief and Meaningless Worms

Brandon Taylor’s Real Life was one of those novels I only really read before bed. Maybe that’s because my days are consumed of late by “Quill and Quire” job postings, but it’s more likely because it is a distinctly nighttime-feeling novel. Most of the more intense scenes happen between dusk and dawn, and when I say intense, I mean contort your face as you consume the words because it feels invasive to know what’s happening even if it is to a fictional character. I think this is because of the absolute truth in each scene, from the senses, to the feelings, to the stark reality of how different folks interact with each other, how fragile any kind of stability is. In other words, what Brandon Taylor unearths through his book is a gut-wrenching picture of his title.

When I think of the phrase “this is real life,” I think of a scene in which an adolescent 20-something is dealing with their first apartment, bills, and the stress of starting life beyond their education. I picture that person calling their guardian and crying as the other end of the line says, “Honey, this is real life. And you’ve just gotta keep pushin on.” In other words, a crash into the world of responsibility. I guess that’s kind of the encapsulation of this story at it’s most basic, albeit with a plethora of foreign scientific terms and miles of complications beyond a chartered 20-something’s trajectory into the workforce.

The main character, Wallace, is a graduate student in Biology attending a university in the Midwestern United States and his specialty is patience as he does the long-term work that no one else in his lab wants to take on. He’s the only Black man amidst his entirely white friend group and program (besides one of my favourite characters, Brigit), which presents battles that cannot be fought without stronger, more permanent retribution against him, so he tends to live in this space of rigid cautious. He’s also gay, which compounds the situation even further as his love interest fights his own internal homophobia and (literally, at times) pins it against Wallace. We then follow Wallace through a particularly grueling 72 hours. I will say, for any reader with triggers in eating disorders, racism, homophobia, and physical and/or sexual assault, just read with caution.

What struck me the most about Taylor's writing is the stunning corporeal temporality of each scene. The novel is regularly sized, yet only takes place across three vividly detailed days. Each hour is described not with an abundance of feeling, but with the complex nuances of what one might notice more sharply with the sensory overload that pairs with big ones like grief or fear. The novel seems to be both an exploration of what gives something meaning and how meaningless everything is, just as everything from the colour of the lake water, to the taste of iron in blood, to the throat tension paired with nausea gives the book a vivid closeness while also managing to seem remarkably distanced.

Though it is gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, and hard to read at times, this exploration of life in a weekend snapshot is one of the best books I’ve read in awhile. Taylor’s writing style is exquisite and has a kind of tense gentleness to it that I admire. Especially in a time when all of us are forced into tight quarters as we reckon with what kind of person we might be, this novel is one that aids in the kinds of questions we should be asking: what is real life? Why is joy so fickle against the persistent flame of anger? Am I selfish? Or are we all selfish and find some strange masochistic comfort in calling out other people on it? What am I really doing? What matters? Where do I find joy?

And as I’ve said an abundance of times before, any novel that makes you question things is bound to be incredible. I can’t wait to actually purchase this one instead of just reading it through the library!