(my thanks to the publisher for providing the eARC in exchange for an honest review)

This was written introspectively and thoughtfully, really touching on the minutea of one´s mid-twenties experience - the uncertainty, the questioning of the past, present and future, the pressures from your family, peers and even yourself.
Taylor´s narrative follows different characters from the same mid-western town, and partially from the same group of friends/acquintances, which enables him to tackle more specific experiences and in turn make the narrative more universal.
However, the execution of this structure made for the biggest downfall of the read for me. My reading experience felt a little disjointed because the characters kept getting mixed up in my mind. I thought this is mostly because I am unable to see characters in my mind as many people do, and going off by names is also not an option for me due to my terrible short-term memory. However, I noticed that other reviewers have pointed this out as well. The characters being from roughly the same circle, there ended up being 4 dancers and 2 piano players in the group, with also did not help much with telling them apart.. So in the end what was supposed to be specific ended up being mostly the opposite in my mind.
I still enjoyed the read a lot. It made me interested in Taylor´s work and appreciative of his observations..

I posted this review on GoodReads:


Olivia
309 reviews
May 3, 2023
I received this as an ARC from NetGalley.

I love this book - certainly my favorite Brandon Taylor to date, and I love him and his newsletter. It was really interesting to see everything he writes about in terms of his literary opinions actually go onto the page in this book in a real way, and it was beautiful. I keep thinking about this book, the depth and nuance.

I'll be writing a longer essay about this work - there is a lot to think about, and I want to do it thoughtfully. (You can sign up for my writing newsletter at www.tinyletter.com/roamingolivia!)

At the core, this is a campus novel about desire and never truly knowing what's good or bad for you. I hadn't read anything by the author before and found it a little heavy in places. That being said, it was well written and the characters were relatable up to a point.
Thanks to Jonathan Cape, Brandon Taylor and Netgalley for the ARC.

I can't pinpoint why but this book wasn't for me - I was about 30% of the way through when I realized I didn't know which character was which and I found it difficult to differentiate. I guess it just wasn't relatable for me.

Brandon Taylor is a brilliant writer. This novel is beautifully constructed, tackling, with engaging narrative, ideas about relationships and place, and relationships and intimacy in place. It's hypnotic writing, this. The characters unfold as complicated, as well as complex (the two things are entirely different, and it's *really* hard to convey that in writing.) More than that, there is an ingenuity to the writing that is admirable, a pace and tension that works incredibly well. Very highly recommended. My grateful thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC

BRENDON TAYLOR – THE LATE AMERICANS *****

I read this novel in advance of publication through NetGalley in return for an honest review.

The Late Americans is a tour de force. Extraordinary prose with very real characters at the heart of his story. The opening nearly put me off; I couldn’t get into it, so many words whose meanings I didn’t know (thank God for Kindle’s built-in dictionary!) and an intellectual discussion between several friends that I simply wasn’t into. But I’m glad I persevered, because the more I read, the more engrossed I became, this story of the entangled lives of a group of black and white, queer and straight young people.

It's not a plot-driven novel, all about characters and place, so I’m not going to precis the story. It is one of those unflashy books that beckons you in, then grabs you by the throat and won’t let up until the final page.

Sorry but I did not finish this book. I have not read any of Brandon Taylor’s novels previously s wasn’t familiar with his writing. Unfortunately it is not for me. I wasn’t particularly interested in any of the characters and found the sex scenes a bit too much for my liking.

With thanks to NetGalley for an ARC copy of the book.

The Late Americans follows a group of friends, lovers and acquaintances in Iowa City as they each reach a crossroads in their lives. I loved this book and the characters - Taylor draws people so accurately, they feel like real people, not just characters.

The majority of the characters are male. Seamus is a poet dating Oliver, Fyodor and Timo are partners from opposite ends of the economic divide. Goran has a rich family too: his partner Ivan does not. Noah is a dancer, as is Fatima (Ivan was too until a knee injury ended his dreams of a career in dance).

What unites all of them is their struggle to find happiness in modern America. Whilst most of them have people they could turn to, they come across as isolated and alone. Those not from family money have to deal with the pressure of living precarious lives with low-income jobs. The impact of racism and class is ever-present.

The first few chapters read like short stories with one reference to a character in the previous chapter the only hint there's any connection. Around the midpoint, characters begin to overlap as people meet at parties, hook up and connect in new ways. Considering how many characters we meet in the book, it's skilful how Taylor differentiates between each, giving the reader a clear sense of each character in just a few sentences. I thought of Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh and their writing - how they often write characters that are in some way isolated but manage to make the reader care about them.

The Late Americans is published in July and I really would recommend it as an excellent, engrossing read.

The Late Americans is Brandon Taylor’s third novel and it is told in third person from multiple POV’s. It is more like a short story collection with how many POV’S there are but they are all connected to make the it a novel. The novel is set in a university town in the American Midwest and it follows a group of friends. The friends have intimate relationships with each other and test the boundaries within the group. The friends in this group are all very complicated individuals and that made this novel feel very real. This felt very in line with Brandon Taylor's other work and I do think if you liked Real Life and Filthy Animals you will like this. The writing was good and flowed but there was just too many short sentences and they started to annoy me. The characters were relatable but there was too many characters to follow and I did start to get a bit confused with who was who and who was in a relationship with each other because the relationship dynamics between all the couples were complex. Overall, I did have a good time with this and I definitely recommend this. It was written well and I do enjoy Brandon Taylor's work.

This is a good follow-up to Real Life, even if it remains on familiar ground, The characters are engaging and the writing lucid.

I found this novel unusual in that it's more of a interconnected set of stories, with overlapping characters and storylines and relationships that deepen as the focus shifts to others, bringing peripheral characters to the centre as the novel develops. However, this is somewhat frustrating as some characters more or less disappear without the resolution I wanted to see and others are introduced very late and to seemingly little effect on the wider narrative. I was more taken by some characters than others and so I found my enjoyment waxed and waned dependent on the focus of a particular section. The mood is set really evocatively and my overall feeling having finished reading was that I'd gained a very good impression of what the author wanted to convey but it didn't have much emotional resonance for me. It's clever and well-written but not to my particular taste. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC,

Brandon Taylor has done it again!!! I think The Late Americans is perhaps my favourite of his books yet! The interweaving stories of his characters, linked by their shared feelings of unimportance yet desperation to be noticed, considered, was just superb. A title I will definitely be returning to again and again.

1.5 🌟

Unfortunately this novel was not for me. I was really intrigued by the premise, but was confused by the laser focus on characters the blurb largely implied would not be central to the plot.

While I usually adore pretentious characters, I couldn't find any depth to these ones and I didn't find their dialogue matched their ages. Other than that, the writing was okay, the execution just wasn't to my personal taste.

Less a novel for me than a set of interlinking short stories, The Late Americans was an interesting study of sex and identity, but not necessarily one that will stay with me. I usually let a book sit with me for a few days before reviewing to get some perspective, but in this case it seems to be less than the sum of its parts after just a couple of days.

I did find a lot of the characters quite forgettable - generally young, horny and irritating. Some with rich families, some without, and that seemed the main source of tension. I’m left unmoved I’m afraid.

I loved the first chapter of this novel by the incomparable Brandon Taylor. But - and I hate to say this - I found myself losing interest with the vast array of different characters. Personally, it took me too long to get engrossed, and I found my attention drifting.

I was delighted to read Brandon Taylor's newest book after loving Real Life a couple of years ago. This is about a group of friends & their larger orbit pretty much all studying at a college in Iowa. Each chapter is told from a new perspective & I would say the plot is minimal. Which is not a criticism! Especially as this is such a beautiful character study.

As with Real Life, the loneliness & longing jumps out of the book and sits in the room with you. It's mostly very sad, slightly hopefully and extremely sexy.

I'm not someone with an English degree or a dance background so some of the references were a touch lost on me. Also I found Bea's chapter a bit unnecessary as she felt very disconnected from the wider group.

I love a novel that is pretty much interconnected short-stories so this format really worked for me. Will always read whatever Brandon Taylor is writing - I know this book will follow me around for quite some time.

I had really high hopes for this after enjoying Real Life but it fell a little flat for me. Late Americans follows a loose group of friends in Iowa City. Each chapter follows a different characters perspective with only one or two characters having repeat chapters. They read more like a collection of short stories than an entire novel. I personally need to be able to root for someone in a novel, but nearly all of the characters were pretty unpleasant and I didn't feel that Bea fit into the story at all. The writing is beautiful and razor sharp and Taylor is brilliant at writing gritty, grimy, uncomfortable events but for me this was a collection of uncomfortable relationships thrown together with little harmony.
If you are unlike me, and love a collection of complex not-likable characters then you will probably love this, but it wasn't the book for me.

in summary: brandon taylor is evidently a gifted writer. this one wasn't really for me - but i have no doubts that a different kind of reader would adore it.

this book is full of beautiful prose and interesting points of discussion. the late americans slots neatly into the genre of contemporary literature that spends a lot of time musing on hotly debated topics, alongside a cast of characters that are all sort of mean and have sex with each other all the time.

structurally, it feels like a set of novellas that transitions into a novel, and i am not sure how successful i think it is. the chapters slip between characters in a way that feels elegant at first but becomes clunky, and many of the characters felt like different shades of the same profile so i found it hard to really feel for anyone. not to mention that the two chapters focused on women feel like a bit of an afterthought, introduced only to tick another topic off the list.

this review is perhaps leaning too negatively, but i didn't dislike the book. it was well paced and i read it quite quickly, for the most part enjoying the frequent change in character perspective. it brought some interesting topics to the table too, and it will likely be on my mind for a little while as i let it fully sink in, even if the characters themselves haven't stuck out for me. i think i perhaps had higher expectations due to how highly celebrated the author has been previously

As a novel, this book doesn’t quite work. The writing is luminous but there isn’t really a narrative arc and the characters are almost interchangeable. The chapter devoted to Bea in particular bore no relation to the rest of the book. Iowa sounded like a fun place to hang out though!

This was a good read and Taylor captures that group of young, hedonistic Americans well.

I think I probably preferred Real Life but not taking anything away from this book.

Solid four stars