The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor

The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor
UK Publication: June 2023
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: [★★★]

This ARC was provided by Random House UK (via NetGalley) in exchange for an honest review.

Four word view – Too much un-necessary sex (or am I showing my age?)

Synopsis from Goodreads: In a university town in the American Midwest a circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection as they try to work out what they want, and who they are

As they test their own desires in a series of relationships they are confronted by volatile figures in town, from unruly, vulnerable young poets to a local landlord harbouring a lifetime of resentment.

Seamus, Fyodor, Ivan, Noah and Fatima ask themselves and each other: what is the right thing to stake a life on? Work, love, money, dance, poetry? Is love possible without harm? And what does true connection look like in an age of precarity?

My Thoughts: As other reviewers have mentioned this is more a collection of short stories than a novel, and you guys know how I feel about short stories…The overlapping characters made it hard to keep them straight in my head and it would take a few sentences to orient myself each time with who was who and what they were doing.

University life, the casual sex and the bizarre sexual relationships that happen within the book are not for me and I found myself switching off. By the end of the book I was thinking for heaven’s sake just talk to each other like adults and get rid of all this angst surely by university you are too old for all this teenage squabbling and stop trying to outdo each other with who has experienced the worst trauma or the most discrimination, support each other and f**k the rest of the world.

Who would like this? This wasn’t a bad book it was just not a me book. Other readers may well love it. So if you love self-obsessed adults displaying teenage angst and an anger about why the world isn’t the way they think it should be go for it.

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