Real Life cover art

Real Life

A Novel

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About this listen

 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. African American Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Fiction Inspiring
All stars
Most relevant
I wanted more from this book, I'm left frustrated about Wallace's job, how it turned out and about his relationship with miller

felt the story was not complete

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It was an interesting read. it explored the delicate intricacies of relationships, trauma, emotions, defiance, race and life....real life.

coming of age book.

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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.

Beautiful writing

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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.

Beautiful, well read story

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Did not hugely rate the narrator of this story. Distracting at times rather than adding to the story or bringing characters alive.

Not a fan of the narrator

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