Wow wow wow wow wow! I am in love! I thought Little Blue Encyclopedia couldn't be topped, but Hazel Jane Plante's follow-up is somehow even more beautWow wow wow wow wow! I am in love! I thought Little Blue Encyclopedia couldn't be topped, but Hazel Jane Plante's follow-up is somehow even more beautiful and tender and fucked up and evocative. Maybe it's the subject matter- rock and roll has always matter to me so much more than anime. Or maybe it's the way in which the fictive City becomes a character in ways I've not seen outside of the fantasy worlds of NK Jemisin or Catherynne Valente. But I think what it probably is, is the love. Plante loves trans women and sees us with all of our fucked up insecurities, neuroses, and assorted damages and manages to show us that, either in spite of or perhaps because of them, we are still wonderful creatures moving through the world as creators of our own lives and stewards of our own mythic histories.
I avoided reading this book for months since its release because I'd been waiting for it since I finished Little Blue Encyclopedia and knew that it would be a years long wait until Plante writes a follow-up and wanted to savor the anticipation of finally getting to cracking this open. But a friend was desperate to talk with me about it so I bumped it up my queue and devoured it this morning while laying in my hammock and watching the sunrise. Plante's writing is a gift and she absolutely deserves every possible accolade for this book. I won't recount the plot, you can read the synopsis on the book Jacket just as well as I can, but suffice to say that the story-as-mixtape conceit works astoundingly well for me and I was smitten with all of Plante's characters. Absolutely top notch writing, please do not miss this....more
*Received as a free download from Tor.com as part of their "In Our Own Worlds" promotion for Pride month in 2019*
You literally could not write a piece*Received as a free download from Tor.com as part of their "In Our Own Worlds" promotion for Pride month in 2019*
You literally could not write a piece of urban speculative fiction more perfectly designed to hit all of my interests. Queer anarchist crust punks, squatters, travelers, and houseless people come together to build an intentional community in a tiny Iowa town and inadvertently summon an eldritch anti-authoritarian demon in the form of a three-antlered deer who starts to kill off the more aggressive of the radicals? This plot could have been culled directly from my day dreams. I don't know Margaret Killjoy, but reading the honesty with which she writes about traveling folk, or recounts the interminable processes of facilitating a non-hierarchical group discussion makes me think that we exist in the same milieu (with two or maybe three degrees of separation between us tops). I'm exceptionally glad that this ended up as a promotional novella from Tor because I've now discovered a fantastic new highly imaginative writer to obsess over....more
My wife cried when reading this, which is not remarkable because my wife also cries during life insurance commercials with elderly couples. Or if she My wife cried when reading this, which is not remarkable because my wife also cries during life insurance commercials with elderly couples. Or if she thinks about animals in distress too much. She cried at Pride the other week when we saw the elderly lesbian contingent. I wouldn't call her a crybaby, but I *would* say that tears are not unexpected in moments of extreme emotion.
Regardless, this past winter she cried while reading this and told me that I absolutely *had* to read it. That it was tender and sweet and heartbreaking and that it touched her heart. That was six months ago and I've only just now gotten to it (which is actually quite fast given that the average span between me being recommended a book and actually reading it could be measured on geological time).
She was right. This book is sweet and tender and makes my little gay heart well up at the thought of Ellis, Annie, and Michael and their love and struggles. Few things get to me quite as much as lost love and this book lived up to her recommendation. If you, like me, long for stories featuring that first terrifying and tantalizing spark of love of our early teens, but without the incredible (and frankly gross) age disparity of Call Me By Your Name, you will find it here. It's not a happy story, but it's an incredibly compelling one. One that touched my heart and made me cry on my lunch break while reading it. I'm enormously pleased to have read this and will absolutely be looking for more by Sarah Winman in the future....more