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    The Late Americans: A Novel
    The Late Americans: A Novel
    The Late Americans: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Late Americans: A Novel

    Written by Brandon Taylor

    Narrated by Kevin R. Free

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, OPRAH DAILY, THE WASHINGTON POST, BUZZFEED AND VULTURE

    “Erudite, intimate, hilarious, poignant . . . A gorgeously written novel of youth’s promise, of the quest to find one’s tribe and one’s calling.” —Leigh Haber, Oprah Daily

    The Booker Prize finalist and widely acclaimed author of Real Life and Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads

    In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” These four are buffeted by a cast of artists, landlords, meatpacking workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of the city, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives—a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.

    A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Audio
    Release dateMay 23, 2023
    ISBN9780593671801
    Author

    Brandon Taylor

    Brandon Taylor is the author of the novels Real Life (shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize) and The Late Americans and the short-story collection Filthy Animals (awarded the Story Prize and shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize).

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    Reviews for The Late Americans

    3/5

    22 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5

      Jan 11, 2024

      I liked this a lot. Taylor takes a cast of characters, most but not all MFA students in the arts and writing programs, most but not all young queer guys, most—no, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say all—in the process of figuring out who they are and what they want. Which sounds like it could be the insipid framework of any number of that kind of story, but it's not at all. Taylor's a lovely writer, observant of people and their circumstances, and of the human spirit, and he really cares about his characters—which makes the reader (this reader, anyway) feel generous toward them too, even when they're difficult. It's not a plotty book, and some of the characters show up and then just drift out of the frame. But that's life, which is what this very warm book is about, and I'm good with that.
    • 3/5

      Jul 6, 2023

      The Late Americans is called a novel, but is very nearly a connection of linked short stories, following a group of graduate students from about October to the spring of their final year in Iowa. Some are poets, some are dancers, all of them are horny and still figuring out this thing called life.

      The story begins with Seamus in a class critiquing a poem, and ends with Daw, Noah, Fatima, and several others that we've met along the way having a party before they all go their separate ways. Most of the characters are gay men and there's sex or masturbation in just about every chapter, which was a lot for me, personally (though it didn't seem to be particularly sexy, more about the age and stage in life they were in?). There's not a lot by way of plot, but each chapter gives sort of a character study of one or more of the grad students. And Taylor can write: some of his sentences and observations are perfection, and that, ultimately is what kept me reading.