DEAD COLLECTIONS

An archivist who happens to be a vampire receives a collection belonging to the late creator of a cult TV show, triggering a series of dramatic life shifts.

Even before he became a vampire—spurred by a freak case of tetanus, after which his body must be sustained by blood transfusions and religiously shielded from the sun—Sol Katz had always lived somewhat apart from others. A trans man who, for years pre-transition, inhabited a body he “[couldn’t] bear to have touched,” Sol has always worked “best with imaginary or fictitious people,” first as a fan fiction writer and then a steadfastly patient archivist at the Historical Society of Northern California. Sol’s reclusive life, though, is disrupted when the magnetic Elsie brings in a collection belonging to Tracy Britton, her dead wife, the creator of the science-fiction TV show Feet of Clay. Coincidentally, this is the fandom in which Sol used to write. Almost instantly, Sol’s world is shaken as he forms an intimate bond with Elsie, who is stubbornly vulnerable and unequivocally herself; and as he goes through Tracy’s papers, he relives the journey he’s taken to understand his own gender identity. As he and Elsie grow closer, he must contend with the nearly frightening experience of desire for the first time in years and the risks inherent in a sexual relationship with a human—to whom vampire bites can be dangerous. As Sol’s life threatens to disintegrate around him—Tracy’s collection inexplicably decays before his eyes; he experiences near brushes with the sunlight after sleeping over at Elsie’s—he's led to reevaluate his life and weighs the benefits of safely tucking himself away in the archives against inhabiting the flesh-and-blood human world. Author Fellman has sensitively constructed the complex internal landscape of a multilayered protagonist whose self-consciousness, quirks, and anxieties are palpable; vampire or not, Sol is a uniquely relatable character whose inner life jumps off the page. Though Sol and Elsie’s relationship sometimes veers into the saccharine, their shared vulnerability as each grapples with their sexual and gender identities is genuinely moving. Most of all, the book’s musings about bodies—their trials, tribulations, and pleasures; the ways they sometimes serve and sometimes oppose their owners—provides a deep, rich undercurrent.

Unique and emotionally deep.