Trigger warnings for this novel are as follows: abuse, rape, racism, domestic violence


If there's one thing I really love, it's campus novels.

Brandon Taylor's Real Life is more a lab novel than a campus novel (yay for STEM representation in a genre full of humanities!), but it's also so much more than that. It's a novel that deals with racism, abuse, being queer, being lost in life, being on your own, vulnerability, love, hatred and how all these factors intersect.

While reading it, I kept thinking back to John Williams' Stoner (the quintessential campus novel, I suppose), Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life (where abuse, queerness and academia cross paths more than once) and Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (which I read not too long ago, which also deals with being a non-White queer). These books are part of the reason I can't really figure out how to categorize this novel, because while I can map out major themes in all of them, Real Life leaves me stumped. I can't really tell you what the central theme of the novel is, and in that lies, in my opinion, it's strength.

In all of our lives, no one theme makes up for the entirety of our story. Instead, certain parts play bigger roles, others fade into the background, but they are always there; it's up to us to find out how we can tell our own stories. And in that regard, Wallace is just like all of us, and he's a deeply real character, full of flaws, pain, fear and - miraculously - hope.