"The past is greedy, always swallowing you up, always taking. If you don't hold it back, if you don't dam it up, it will spread and take and drown. The past is not a receding horizon. Rather, it advances one moment at a time, marching steadily forward until it has claimed everything and we become again who we were; we become ghosts when the past catches us. I can't live as long as my past does. It's one or the other."

Thanks to Riverhead books for providing me with a free digital ARC of this work. However, as soon as I started reading the digital copy, I knew that I needed to get my hands on a physical one as well.

Real Life follows Wallace, a biochem graduate student in a Midwestern town as he grapples with his identity, his relationships with his colleagues and friends, and his past and future. Wallace has kept his distance from his cohort of graduate students, as a tactic of self-preservation, often feeling that he is an outsider as the only gay African-American in his group of friends. It is a quiet book, focused more on character development than on a racing plot. I was absorbed by Taylor's writing style and carefully crafted and poetic sentences. His writing is just beautiful and reflects Wallace's state of mind as his world is rocked by the dynamics in his group of friends. I enjoyed the different portraits of sexuality and relationships presented by the various characters, even through all of their difficulties. The book is by no means an easy read, with several triggering incidents and tough discussions. However, it is an important look at a character struggling through his life in graduate school (which I very much related to) and trying to figure out if the life he is in is truly 'real' life.

5 stars all the way.

TW: sexual assault, depicted several times; depression; suicidal ideation; homophobia; racism