Experiment in self-discovery

IN BRANDON TAYLOR’S HIGHLY anticipated novel Real Life, protagonist Wallace—Southern, black and gay—has left behind his family and their fraught shared history to pursue graduate studies in biochemistry at a predominantly white Midwestern university. The novel unfolds over three long days spent in and out of the lab, diving into the daily indignities Wallace faces in a quietly toxic environment.

Wallace finds himself stressed by the discovery that his experiment, breeding nematode worms, has been ruined by mold; we wonder, perhaps, if it was the work of a saboteur. Still, he chooses to celebrate the last weekend of summer with friends from his program. But as the only black person among this clique of academics, he maintains