
Real Life
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Kevin R. Free
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By:
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Brandon Taylor
About this listen
2020 Booker Prize short-listed
2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize long-listed
2021 Lambda Literary Award short-listed
2020 National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize short-listed
2021 VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize short-listed
2021 Young Lions Award short-listed
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.
©2020 Brandon Taylor (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"[A] stunning debut...Taylor proves himself to be a keen observer of the psychology of not just trauma, but its repercussions.... There is a delicacy in the details of working in a lab full of microbes and pipettes that dances across the pages like the feet of a Cunningham dancer: pure, precise poetry." (Jeremy O. Harris, The New York Times Book Review)
"Equal parts captivating, erotic, smart and vivid...[rendered] with tenderness and complexity, from the first gorgeous sentence of his book to its very last...Taylor is also tackling loneliness, desire and - more than anything—finding purpose, meaning and happiness in one’s own life." (Time)
"[Real Life is] a sophisticated character study of someone squaring self-preservation with a duty to tolerate people who threaten it. The book teems with passages of transfixing description, and perhaps its greatest asset is the force of Wallace’s isolation, which Taylor conveys with alien strangeness." (The New Yorker)
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- Unabridged
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Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, 10-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan.
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Great story and great performance!
- By Anonymous User on 01-29-21
By: Rebecca Makkai
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Whoever You Are, Honey
- A Novel
- By: Olivia Gatwood
- Narrated by: Olivia Gatwood
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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On the Santa Cruz, California, waterfront, every house is a flawless glass monolith. Except for one. In a dilapidated bungalow, Mitty and her elderly roommate, Bethel, are the oddball pair who represent the last vestiges of a free-spirited town taken over by the tech elite. But their lives are about to be forever changed when a new couple, Sebastian and Lena, move in next door. Sebastian is a renowned tech founder and Lena is his girlfriend. But Lena has secrets; she feels uneasy about her oddly spotty memory and is growing increasingly wary of the way Sebastian controls their relationship.
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Interesting…..but kept me listening
- By Kate on 04-10-25
By: Olivia Gatwood
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Say Hello to My Little Friend
- By: Jennine Capó Crucet
- Narrated by: Krizia Bajos
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes—you can call him Izzy—might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull’s legal team and living in his aunt’s garage, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana.
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Solid weird book
- By D B on 02-21-25
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A Bright Ray of Darkness
- A Novel
- By: Ethan Hawke
- Narrated by: Ethan Hawke
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Hawke's narrator is a young man in torment, disgusted with himself after the collapse of his marriage, still half hoping for a reconciliation that would allow him to forgive himself and move on as he clumsily, and sometimes hilariously, tries to manage the wreckage of his personal life with whiskey and sex. What saves him is theater: in particular, the challenge of performing the role of Hotspur in a production of Henry IV under the leadership of a brilliant director, helmed by one of the most electrifying - and narcissistic - Falstaff's of all time.
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A Powerfully written dissection of an Actor’s Soul.
- By Tom on 02-14-21
By: Ethan Hawke
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Long Division
- A Novel
- By: Kiese Laymon
- Narrated by: Ruffin Prentiss III, Jaime Lincoln Smith
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie. Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985.
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Quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, but...
- By Sherrye LeRoy on 05-08-25
By: Kiese Laymon
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The Book of Fire
- A Novel
- By: Christy Lefteri
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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In present-day Greece, deep in an ancient forest, lives a family: Irini, a musician, who teaches children to read and play music; her husband, Tasso, who paints pictures of the forest, his greatest muse; and Chara, their young daughter, whose name means joy. On the fateful day that will forever alter the trajectory of their lives, flames chase fleeing birds across the sky. The wildfire that will consume their home, and their lives as they know it, races toward them.
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Disappointment
- By Anonymous User on 01-27-24
By: Christy Lefteri
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Holler, Child
- Stories
- By: LaToya Watkins
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Aaron Goodson, JD Jackson, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces us to a character irrevocably shaped by place and reaching toward something—hope, reconciliation, freedom. In “Cutting Horse,” the appearance of a horse in a man’s suburban backyard places a former horse breeder in trouble with the police. In “Holler, Child,” a mother is forced into an impossible position when her son gets in a kind of trouble she knows too well from the other side.
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Great book and readers
- By Paula C. Brancato on 08-10-24
By: LaToya Watkins
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The Spoiled Heart
- A Novel
- By: Sunjeev Sahota
- Narrated by: Esh Alladi
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town. She’s returned with her teenage son to live in the run-down house at the end of the lane, and—though she’s strangely guarded—Nayan can’t help but be drawn to her. He hasn’t risked love since losing his young family in a terrible accident twenty years earlier.
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Misunderstandings lead to life altercations
- By A. L. Frati on 06-25-25
By: Sunjeev Sahota
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Florida
- By: Lauren Groff
- Narrated by: Lauren Groff
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
Over a decade ago, Groff moved to her adopted home state of Florida. The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida—its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind—becomes its gravitational center. Storms, snakes, and sinkholes lurk at the edge of everyday life, but the greater threats and mysteries are of a human, emotional, and psychological nature. Groff's evocative storytelling and knife-sharp intelligence first transport the listener, then jolt us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty....
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Don't buy the audiobook
- By Ethan Gouveia on 06-16-18
By: Lauren Groff
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Cinema Love
- A Novel
- By: Jiaming Tang
- Narrated by: Samantha Tan
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
While classic war films played, Old Second and his countrymen found intimacy in the screening rooms. In the box office, Bao Mei sold movie tickets to closeted men, guarding their secrets and finding her own happiness with the projectionist. But when Old Second’s passion for his male lover is revealed, a series of haunting events unfold, propelling these characters toward an uncertain future in America.
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Inventive story elegant prose
- By C. FREEMAN on 06-27-25
By: Jiaming Tang
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The Friday Night Club
- A Novel of Artist Hilma af Klint and Her Creative Circle
- By: Sofia Lundberg, Alyson Richman, M.J. Rose
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert, Pete Cross, Alyson Richman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Early 1900s: The world belongs to men, and the art world in Stockholm, Sweden, is no different, until Hilma af Klint brings together a mysterious group of female painters and writers—Anna, Cornelia, Sigrid, and Mathilda—to form their own emotional and artistic support system. The members of the Friday Night Club find themselves thrust into uncharted territory when Hilma and her best friend, Anna, begin dabbling in the occult, believing that through séances they can channel unseen spirits to help them achieve their potential as artists.
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The most important book I’ve read in many years
- By Dane R Rowley on 09-30-23
By: Sofia Lundberg, and others
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Cherry
- A Novel
- By: Nico Walker
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In this “miracle of literary serendipity” (The Washington Post), after finding himself deep in the thrall of heroin addiction, the soldier arrives at what seems like the only logical solution: robbing banks. Written by a singularly talented, wildly imaginative debut novelist, Cherry is a bracingly funny and unexpectedly tender work of fiction straight from the dark heart of America.
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being an ex-junky is much cooler than being a junky
- By K Sabatini on 09-02-18
By: Nico Walker
Intriguing
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Beautiful
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Impressions of Taylor's Real Life
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Heartbreaking
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The Good: We have to start with Kevin R. Free. As usual he gives a stellar performance. He knows how to use emotion in his voice without making it too campy. The writing in this novel is beautiful. The words and description leaves nothing to the imagination. For a debut book I think this author has a lot to offer his readers.
The Bad: My biggest gripe with this book is the ending. If you are the type that needs a satisfying ending...or any kind of ending, this isn't the book for you. I honestly felt like we got to this big build up where the characters were going to finally make choices, like a person would do in Real Life, and then it just ended. And because the author has a tendency to jump backwards into the past to explain current characters, characteristics, or relationships I had no idea where the book ended was where it was going to end or needed to end. It felt empty. This isn't the type of book you can just make up your own mind where the story goes from the end.
indifferent
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Chilling, Excellent
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I read this book for Kid Cudi
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Great prose, tedious plot
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Real Life
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This is a brilliantly written book. Brandon Taylor's pacing and variation throughout are beautifully done. the story moves well, great pace and details - and he is a master of drawing readers into key moments with a slowing down and focusing in on specific parts of a scene. I enjoyed all of this book - and admire his skill in maneuvering through important current events and issues in this book. I particularly love his scenes involving water and food; some of those places I reread/relistened to, as a writer and not just a reader - I know I've already said this - but he is a master of this moving in and out, speeding us up and slowing us down, writing through the body, heart, entire being.
I enjoyed the narration for the audio version. there was enough variation of character voices to know who was who, but it was not too much to be distracting. His voice is clear, matched the story well, good to listen to. very well done.
I highly recommend this book.
Masterful storytelling and narration
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