Real Live by Brandon Taylor

I read about this book when my Univ of Wisconsin magazine came. It was reviewed as a new novel by an alumnus.  It sounded interesting and then I also saw it listed on Emma Straub's "best list" on her bookstore website. So I checked for it on Libby and it was available.
At first I was not sure I was going to get through it. At the start it is all about Wallace's life in the Bio Lab at his school (never mentioned, but obviously UW Madison!). There is a lot of technical science stuff that turned me off, but I continued with the book, being drawn in by Wallace's character and the theme of racism (so in the news right now!)
It's a first novel for the author, who truly DID go to UW Madison for a PhD in biochemistry.  He then pursued his interest in writing and got into the esteemed Iowa Writers' Program. I liked the book a lot even though there were passages that I wanted to skip over (the science stuff.) I kept waiting for that to mean something more in the novel - metaphor or symbolism or something, But I never got that.  The book resonated most because of when I read it, I think. Right in the middle of the protests and rallies surrounding racism in the US, after the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis.  And Madison and Minneapolis are not far apart - not just geographically, it seems.