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The Late Americans

From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Real Life

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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.
Seamus, Fyodor, Ivan, Noah and Fatima are running out of time to decide on their futures, in the new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of Real Life.
In a university town, a circle of lovers and friends navigate tangled webs of connection while they try to work out what they want, and who they are.
As they test their own desires in a series of relationships, these young men and women ask themselves and each other: what is the right thing to stake a life on? Work, love, money, dance, poetry? And what does true connection look like, in an age of precarity?
‘Funny, merciless, brilliant . . . I loved it’ CURTIS SITTENFELD
‘A constellation of characters shines in [this] campus-set tale of aspiring artists’ Financial Times
‘Intimate, hilarious, poignant . . . A gorgeously written novel of youth’s promise’ Oprah Daily
‘Elegant and razor-sharp’ EMMA CLINE

©2023 Brandon Taylor (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 City Life Coming of Age Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Urban Heartfelt

Critic reviews

Assures and deepens Taylor's position as one of the most accomplished, important novelists of his generation. He is undoubtedly on to something expansively new in his sense of what the contemporary novel can do
I loved The Late Americans and its funny, merciless, brilliant portrayal of the beauty and pointlessness of art, and the absurdity and horror - and occasional transcendence - of being a person. Magnificent (Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Romantic Comedy)
Brandon Taylor's third book is the most dazzling example of his sharp pen and keen observations of human nature... Taylor develops his characters so precisely, they feel like close friends: recognisable, sometimes infuriating, and always worth following to the book's last page
Taylor is a sharp chronicler of the body. In The Late Americans, the body is an instrument and an archive, vulnerable to the complicated violence of pleasure and work (Raven Leilani, author of Luster)
Taylor's most accomplished book, a panorama of youth in the era of late capitalism
Elegant... Taylor has a Chekhovian generosity that enables him to convey character with something like tenderness... The relationships move like an eighteenth-century quadrille, at once restrained and spritely... Taylor's vision is unsparing, but never bleak (Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children)
Sensitive and unflinching… The Late Americans is thoroughly contemporary
The Late Americans is remarkable. If you're going to write about art, the folly of pursuing it and the irrefutable power of it, you should probably do it well. Taylor does it truthfully and beautifully
Brandon Taylor has both a classic sensibility, expansive and elegant, and a razor-sharp ability to speak to the contemporary moment. The Late Americans is a full expression of his singular talent (Emma Cline, author of The Girls)
A dizzying plunge into the lives of young people making art in America in the era of survival capitalism, grappling over the big questions like they're fighting over a gun. Deep within their ambitions, their pettiness and lust, is the meaning and even grandeur they seek - and whether or not his characters ever find it, Brandon Taylor has. A bravura performance on the edge of a knife (Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel)
All stars
Most relevant
Taylor can clearly write, but this is a mishmash of underdeveloped ideas about relationships, art and money that never fully cohere. It feels like a book that has been rushed out to fulfil a contractual obligation, rather than out of a clear vision.

This isn't really a novel, more a series of interludes, loosely connected by featuring some of the same characters. However it doesn't work as the themes aren't strong enough to bind them together, and most of the characters are too underdrawn, dull or downright whiny to hold your interest.

Only the Seamus sections have any life or spark. The other characters are too similar and hard to differentiate from one another. The few women characters he includes might as well be men!

The poetry seminars have a dry sense of humour which suggest that a future, possibly less rushed novel, might be worth a look.

Not the great American novel

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