If this is what it's like to have someone write with great insight and profound beauty about a life very like your own, I guess I sort of understand now why literary novels by white men, about white men, are so popular with white men. I mean, I've always loved literary novels. But REAL LIFE is a literary novel in which very little happens, there are no speculative elements, and the gorgeous prose is about, like, people eating french fries at a picnic table by the lake. It doesn't necessarily do anything new--but then again I've never read a book like this before, and what it does do, it does exquisitely.
Also, there's a fair chance I'd've been more awestruck by it if I wasn't listening to it on audiobook while trying not to fall asleep on an airplane I had to get up at 4 AM to catch. So you know.