This little anthology paints for the reader raw and honest emotion. The painful, everyday kind. The small, wrenching dramas of getting through the world. Plett introduces us to a series of trans characters. Most of them deal with returning to small town life, familial relationships, poverty, substance [ab]use, and romantic/sexual relationships. A surprisingly recurrent scene is for a character to get drunk and have their nipples twisted. A slightly less recurrent beat is for a Canadian to immigrate south of the border. (The author is Canadian, and has lived in the US.)
I was a little disappointed in the writing style. The prose was not particularly literary. The story-telling leaned a little too much on dialogue, perhaps hoping to capture in amber the way trans women of the 2010s spoke. Some parts seem overly explained, like the author isn't confident the reader is with her. For example, in one of my favourites—"Portland, Oregon", told from the perspective of a woman's cat—there's a scene included seemingly only to clarify for the reader that only the woman can understand the cat's speech, breaking the magic and mystery of the story unnecessarily.
The stories often ended without warning—sometimes even in the middle of a scene. Perhaps this is a commentary on life as a twenty-something going through transition. There is no end, you just continue going and changing and growing. But it makes for unsatisfying reading.
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