Real Life

This book was a bit slow, but I liked it overall. We follow Wallace, a grad student in the Midwest, over the course of a weekend as he comes to terms with his father’s death and wrestles with whether to stay in school. He feels mostly miserable, and the novel lingers on his isolation and instability.

Wallace is the only Black gay man in his program in a very white environment, and his constant awareness of being out of place and powerless against racism runs through the entire book. The other characters felt almost out of reach — both to Wallace and to me as a reader — since he often isolates himself from them. The one exception is Miller, who Wallace begins to get closer to. Miller’s character was fascinating, though I was never sure if he was a “good” person, and the book ends in uncertainty. Personally, I felt like Wallace deserved better than Miller, who I don’t think could ever fully understand him.

Wallace himself was sometimes difficult to read because he’s constantly spiraling. I understood why he was so inside himself, but I found myself wishing he would stand up more. Still, the book captured that sense of loneliness and displacement in a way that stayed with me.

3.5/5 Stars