Pride Book Club: Real Life

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.

Join us at Capital City Pride Book Club where it is our mission to provide a safe space for all members of the LGBTQ community (+allies) to read and discuss LGBTQ literature; stories that are not only for us, but that are often by us as a community.

Get your copy of Real Life by Brandon Taylor at your local public library, or visit these awesome local retailers: Beaverdale Books, Copy + Paste DSM, Reading in Public Bookstore + Cafe, The Slow Down Coffee Co., Storyhouse Bookpub.