Expansive and empathetic, this novel is a stunner.
A trans man in future New York considers the legacy of his trans parents.
“Who were these two people?” asks Griffon Keming, the protagonist of Fellman’s fourth book, set centuries into the future. “Who were these two people? Revolutionaries, or half-revolutionaries. Survivors, or half-survivors. They spoke a language that was half one thing and half another, and they had spent half their lives together.” Griffon, a transgender man, is writing about his parents, Etoine and Zaffre Zipporah Keming, who are also transgender, and who took Griffon in when he was younger and fleeing his abusive father. Griffon’s parents have died, and he has resolved to discover more about them; the novel switches perspective between Griffon and Etoine, the latter through diary entries that he wrote, partly while in prison for allegedly trying to overthrow the ruler of the city-state of Stephensport, where he and Zaffre lived when they were younger, before moving to New York. Etoine’s diary reveals his longtime friendship with Zaffre, and their roles in the city-state’s revolution movement, while Griffon reflects on his childhood growing up as closeted and trans: “In fact, through my whole adolescence, I stayed a little girl….Everybody liked me this way, and I proceeded invisibly through the world.” Fellman’s worldbuilding is subtle but beautifully done; he captures the essence of a future New York that is covered in canals and also brings Stephensport to life. His dialogue sparkles, particularly in sections featuring Etoine and Zaffre bantering and bickering and others where they tenderly reassure a young Griffon. Most notably, though, Fellman paints a tender portrait of Griffon and his journey to coming out as trans, which he handles with real compassion and insight. This beautifully written, self-assured novel is a major accomplishment.
Expansive and empathetic, this novel is a stunner.Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781250329103
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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