Thirst
Marina Yuszczuk, translated by Heather Cleary
Dutton, 2024, 256 pages
$28.00

Reviewed by Chloe Weber

Thirst is the first book of Argentinian writer Marina Yuszczuk to be published in the United States. It is set almost entirely in Buenos Aires and infused with the author’s love of her home country. This novel is divided into two parts: the first from the point of view of a centuries-old vampire who, after her journey across the Atlantic, watches Buenos Aires as it is built from the ground up into the bustling city we know today; the second from the point of view of a divorced mother in the present day trying to balance emotions about her mother’s declining health, work life, and caring for her five-year-old son.

Above all else, Thirst is a novel that deals heavily with the theme of death and what it means to each woman in a personal sense. In the grand city of Buenos Aires, the location that draws these women together is La Recoleta Cemetery, a real Buenos Aires cemetery that juxtaposes the horror of death with the beauty of its sculptures, much like the intense personality of Yuszczuk’s vampire, who loves carnage just as much as she loves art.

The vampire, who remains nameless, is characterized by a bloodlust that is often beastly and uncontrollable in nature. In order to survive on the streets of the city, she must tame her thirst by learning restraint and what it means to act human. She witnesses death at her own hands, the deaths of thousands of people from yellow fever, and finally the death of her desire to live when she has no one left for company, leading her to lock herself away in a coffin at the turn of the twentieth century.

As the vampire flickers in a fugue state in her coffin, our modern protagonist faces spiritual and personal death as she watches her mother fade away. One of the final messages the protagonist’s mother delivers to her daughter leads her to a key and a photograph, which she is instructed to do nothing with. Against her better judgment, this modern woman uses the key to open the vampire’s coffin, once again unleashing upon Buenos Aires a thirst that has been marinating for centuries.

When these two womens’ paths finally converge, they find themselves tied up in a mutual obsession that gives each a better understanding of what it means to live and die. With the vampire’s help, the modern woman is able to give her struggling mother the death she wishes for, freeing her daughter from the pain of a slow decline. The vampire provides this woman with an opportunity to escape with her, to accept death and face the centuries as they turn in a new light—an offer which she accepts, leaving the rest of her life behind.

Much like the title implies, Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk includes thirst of many kinds: the thirst for blood, the thirst for death, and how this thirst finally culminates in sexual and obsessive desire. Yuszczuk’s vivid descriptions of Buenos Aires make her passages about death all the more morbid, adding a tone and depth to the story that complements the characters in their differing views of a changing world. Thirst is an ambitious novel that hits the ground running with gore and chaos and transforms into a profound philosophical lamentation on grief. Yuszczuk’s readers will come away with a burning melancholy that inspires them to think differently about how death affects their lives.

Chloe Weber is from Montclair, New Jersey and was a Sinister Wisdom intern for the May 2024 season. She is attending her third semester at Macalester College as a student of English and Anthropology, always on the hunt to expand her literary knowledge.

Disembark: Stories
Jen Currin
House of Anansi, 2024, 264 pages
$17.99

Reviewed by Pelaya Arapakis

Jen Currin’s Disembark is a vibrant short story collection offering readers glimpses into the lives of queer characters as they navigate periods of transition and change. Drawing on the narrative modes of realism and magical realism, Currin showcases the breadth and depth of queer relationships—from platonic intimacies to romantic intimacies and the emotional territories in between—exploring the nuances of queer love against the backdrop of urban life.

The collection opens with a story that traces entangled queer relationships, aptly titled “The Golden Triangle.” We encounter a constellation of characters who meet, love, fuck, date each other’s exes, negotiate non-monogamy, and like a tide, drift in and out of each other’s lives. However, the heart of the story revolves around the narrator’s friendship with their gregarious and flirty friend, Del, and the attendant experiences of love, loneliness, grief, and liminal spaces of intimacy. Over the course of the narrative, we learn that the protagonist yearns for a romantic relationship with Del as they grapple with an intense desire for their friend that they attempt to suppress: “Sometimes my mind tried to veer to Del, to the night we’d spent together, her soft skin, the way her tongue had felt in my mouth—but I quickly shut these thoughts out before they could go too far” (10-11). After all, “[They] were just friends, and it would stay that way” (9).

With prose that is effortless, considered, and evocative, Currin embodies the lives of each of their characters with grace and complexity. In “Joey, When She Knew Him,” Currin tenderly explores a different kind of entanglement—the friendships between lesbians and gay men. A profound sense of loss and sorrow suffuses the pages of this story as Currin captures the acute emotional pain of dissolving friendships. The narrator, Sid, recalls how her once-best-friend, Joey, “used to tell her all the time that he loved her” (40). However, the insecure and bedraggled Joey ultimately finds a husband and starts going by a new name: “Joey goes by Richard now” (30). A gulf between Sid and Joey slowly sets in, widening over time, and Sid mourns for the person she once knew.

One of the more fantastical of these stories is the surreal yet witty “Banshee,” which follows the story of a banshee who takes up residency in a lesbian couple’s home. In the story, the narrator navigates a rocky marriage while the imminent threat of climate catastrophe haunts her. The banshee lurks along the fringes of the narrative as Currin charts the changing circumstances that brought about the couple’s marital difficulties. The banshee loiters around the apartment, humming, rocking, moaning, listening to Drake, or playing guitar. It appears she has arrived to perform last rites for the biosphere: she wails, “a thousand gorse fires on the island” (51) and caws, “The winds. . . Close your eyes. The dust the dust the dust” (52). But does the banshee also portend the literal death of the narrator? Or her wife, Matilde? Does she represent the figurative death of their relationship? Or could the banshee signify the death of old ways of relating and the birth of the new? This story leaves us with much to consider.

Across twelve compelling stories, Currin presents us with snapshots into the multifaceted nature of queer relationships and love. The theme of change unites this collection, affording us small moments into the lives of each character as they prepare for new beginnings and journeys of transformation.

Pelaya Arapakis (she/her) is a Sinister Wisdom intern based in Naarm/Melbourne. She is also a musician, cultural worker, and freelance writer.

These Letters End in Tears
Musih Tedji Xaviere
Catapult, 2024, 240 pages
$27.00

Reviewed by Roberta Arnold

In a powerful debut, These Letters End in Tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere is a coup de maître, a stroke of brilliance. Winner of the 2021 Pontas and JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize before it was published, this beautifully written novel is a treatise on culture, politics, and caste wrapped in a love story. Xaviere parses connections between opposites in a way that startles the heart and challenges thought. The epistolary narrative creates an intricate picture of community being fleshed out while writing to the love of one’s life.

In Cameroon, being gay is a crime punishable by death. In spite of this harsh reality, the country is culturally rich–and awash in opposite dyads: Francophiles and Anglophiles, Muslims and Christians, the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the corrupt and the just. It is no surprise when masculine and feminine characteristics among lesbians are examined in the novel. Fatima is butch, and Bessem is femme. Butch mannish behaviors would target one more readily for being a lesbian, along with any woman she is seen with publicly, unlike two feminine women seen together walking arm in arm without risk. Bessem is from an Anglophile Christian family, raised with ample financial means. Fatima is a Muslim from a devoted religious family selling wares on the street. Fatima and Bessem meet at a soccer field where Fatima is playing soccer. When her ball runs close to Bessem’s feet, their attraction is unequivocal and being together is a natural extension of being themselves, as described by their later lovemaking: “… it felt like I was unfolding into you” (p. 17).

A hidden life together continues for three years and then they are separated. A surprise attack, orchestrated by Fatima’s brother, ends when the two lovers are carted away to jail with bruises and cuts. Rescued by her mother and father while Fatima remains behind in the jail cell, Bessem writes to Fatima: “I never saw you again” (p. 20).

The search for Fatima keeps the suspense humming. Although she never gives up searching for her lost love, Bessem goes on to achieve her educational dream of becoming a professor. At one point she tries explaining to her mother that a professorship is not to be confused with a doctorate. A professorship, bestowed by the Minister of Education and the University, has a higher standing in Cameroon, coming only after a doctorate. But when Bessem comes out to her mother, the recognition and honor become meaningless: the mother-daughter bond is divided; the heft of advanced degrees flutters to the ground like paper scraps. Despite the religious consensus that she was “eaten by a lesbian demon,” Bessem holds firm, refusing to marry a man to please her mother, refusing to adhere to dogma and law. She searches out another lesbian relationship with a Francophile named Audrey, trying to decide what it is she is looking for with her: will it be a “smash and dash,” the colloquial term for a short-term gay relationship, or her usual: “smash and stick around for the time being” (p. 114)?

Scenes from life in Cameroon roll forward with the well-oiled skills of a wordsmith. Gravitas is captured with immediacy like expelled poetic breath. “I hold hope in one hand and fear in the other, Fati” (p. 158). At times, I felt as though I were being taken by the hand and led through someone else’s dream, a dream deeply resonating with my own, despite being worlds apart. Their love story is a challenge to any society that tries to diminish others: “I don’t remember my vows word for word, but I recall promising her not to let the world come between us” (p. 193).

This book is for anyone who believes in love, community, and the defiant cry of resilience in survival: “Love is love and we can love whoever we want because love is our birthright” (p. 222).

Roberta Arnold I am a lop-sided lesbian elder living in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I am very close, physically and mentally, to my sister, my dog, and my cat–not one who belongs to me though I hold each one close to my heart. I walk and swim and read and write and find myself in awe of nature and animals. I was born in Houston, raised in New York City, and have done a fair bit of seeing the world. In my good fortune, I came from an unusual lesbian-feminist-author mother, June Arnold. I’ve published stories and book reviews in Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal. Back in the 1970s, I sat on a grassy lawn and wrote a short story for Ain’t I A Woman? Press in Iowa City, Iowa, when traveling across the country with a van full of radical dykes. This journey was outlined by me and my outlaw compadres in Sinister Wisdom 95, Reconciliations, 1971 Dyke Outlaw Roadtrip. With my sister, I wrote a tribute to my mother in Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later. More recently, I had a book review about Andrea Dworkin in Ms. Magazine. I volunteer and serve on the board at Sinister Wisdom and am a member of Dykewriters and OLOC.

Hotel Impala
Pat Spears
Twisted Road Publications, 2024, 392 pages
$19.95

Reviewed by Roberta Arnold

In this stunning, literary tour-de-force, Pat Spears once again brings us into the courageous humanity found among the dire, inexplicably brutal and intertwined human situations of poverty on a lesbian. The novel is defined by characters in chapter headings by name: Leah, the mother who wants to feel the creative reach of being without the drugs that quell the disease but leave her feeling mentally deadened; Grace, the budding teenager who tries to manage her mother whirling in and out of the throes of mental illness; Daniel, the gentle father who tries to keep his family together without sufficient means; the youngest, Zoe who is just barely allowed her child feelings; and the lesbian policewoman who comes to their aid. Other vivid characters remain in one’s memory well after they leap from the page with fast-moving action, defining the inner and outer reach of a community.

Complicated by a failed social system and the mother’s driving desire for creative inspiration, the family system breaks apart. The father and daughter and lesbian officer tenuously set about putting it back together again like a home of pick-up-sticks with a hurricane threatening on the horizon. What feels like a descent into an increasingly untenable situation with danger around every corner is buoyed by the writing flowing evenly in seamless chapters. Hope is found by defining the abiding truths: inherent in the carefully fleshed-out layers of each person is a force striving towards what is true within community and love. I was most struck by the character of Grace, the iconic lesbian child, somehow still blooming with desires despite the hard realities poverty creates. Like Dorothy Allison’s wise reminders, Spears’ novel teaches us how survival in an impossible system is a constant struggle of grace and grit. The quote at the front of the book opens the door to this kind of thought, almost as a caution light to stay vigilant and not take everything at face value as the quote implies: “Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.” (Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina).

This is the third book by Spears, and it is another lesbian classic. I recommend it for anyone who works in a shelter, social services, a mental health profession, or anyone who wants to imagine how someone being given the least amount of chances can survive–or not. I would pair this book with Phyllis Chesler’s famous treatise on bias towards women in the mental health profession, Women and Madness (1972), and Mab Segrest’s brilliant exposé, Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum. All three combine to create a stark gut-punch hit of awareness about what happens to women with mental health struggles. In Hotel Impala, Spears makes it impossible to turn a blind eye to the struggle of women’s mental health by bringing the point home to the caring daughter. The strong lesbian daughter character of Grace elicits hope that will be re-writing the endings.

Roberta Arnold I am a lop-sided lesbian elder living in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. I am very close, physically and mentally, to my sister, my dog, and my cat–not one who belongs to me though I hold each one close to my heart. I walk and swim and read and write and find myself in awe of nature and animals. I was born in Houston, raised in New York City, and have done a fair bit of seeing the world. In my good fortune, I came from an unusual lesbian-feminist-author mother, June Arnold. I’ve published stories and book reviews in Sinister Wisdom: A Multicultural Lesbian Literary & Art Journal. Back in the 1970s, I sat on a grassy lawn and wrote a short story for Ain’t I A Woman? Press in Iowa City, Iowa, when traveling across the country with a van full of radical dykes. This journey was outlined by me and my outlaw compadres in Sinister Wisdom 95, Reconciliations, 1971 Dyke Outlaw Roadtrip. With my sister, I wrote a tribute to my mother in Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later. More recently, I had a book review about Andrea Dworkin in Ms. Magazine. I volunteer and serve on the board at Sinister Wisdom and am a member of Dykewriters and OLOC.

Untethered
Shelley Thrasher
Bold Strokes Books, 2024, 240 pages
$18.95

Reviewed by Martha Miller

There aren’t a lot of books by and about older lesbians. I think May Sarton was the last senior writer who wrote and published books about life over seventy. So, I was drawn to this book for that reason. The protagonist, Helen, is eighty-one years old. Many younger readers can’t imagine being that old and still walking upright, but I can, and I think I am not alone. The Baby Boomers were the largest generation born since World War II. During our lifetimes, some things happened to lessen our numbers, including the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, AIDS, the War on Terror (Afghanistan and Iraq), and most recently, COVID-19. The first and last took the largest of our numbers. So many of us didn’t make it to our sixties, seventies, and eighties, but we are still a large population. Speaking for myself, I look for stories about older lesbians because I know there are still a lot of adventures and things left to settle this late in life.

Helen Rogers’ story is framed by a mystery about herself and her family that leaves me questioning some of my own experiences. We start when she has just survived cancer and experienced a divorce from a longtime lover. She finds herself constantly alone, often by choice, as she has a hard time talking to people. Even though she still feels a bit unsteady after these two big events, she thinks getting away will help. So, she reserves a trip for a relaxing cruise to Bali with two close friends, a couple whose names are Martha Jo and Amy. This trip with several other senior citizens is one where everything goes wrong, starting with the plane trip from Texas and ending with expensive extra weeks in Bali because she catches COVID-19.

Amid the shipboard chaos and excursions to seldom-visited Indonesian islands, Thrasher gives us rich descriptions of warm ocean breezes, clouds in an aquamarine sky, waves, and beaches. Gradually, Helen becomes mesmerized by a younger, unhappily married woman named Grace. While alone, she and Helen exchange life stories and enjoy pleasant company as they make their way to their destination. Helen describes two marriages to men and, lastly, a long relationship with a woman that has just ended. After these revelations, suddenly Grace starts to run hot and cold. She asks Helen to save her a seat at dinner, then shows up and sits with someone else. She is unavailable and then friendly again. Finally, with no explanation, Grace pulls away entirely.

Both Helen and her friend Amy become ill with COVID-19 and must stay in isolation, far, far from home. Alone in a beautiful room that she’s too sick to enjoy, with mouthwatering food that she can barely eat, Helen thinks about her life and is haunted by previous relationships, especially the last, where her refusal to work on their poor communication caused their divorce. Although Grace has quit their friendship, Helen can’t let go. By the time she’s well enough to travel, she’s raised several questions about herself and is determined to find the answers.

After a nightmarish flight home, several months of recovery and reflection, as well as some research, Helen realizes that most women in her family have a different makeup; they live on the autism spectrum and process life differently. This forever changes the way she sees herself and her possibility of love.

Helen’s trip and the possible relationship with Grace were interesting and well-written. The frame of Helen’s search and discovery was more difficult for me. Maybe I didn’t understand the extent of her difficult communication. Helen admits wouldn’t go to counseling for that reason, so she lost her longtime lover. Teaching college English for several years, I often encountered students on the spectrum. Most of them were quite focused and earned A’s. Now I’m thinking about them. Helen has told me what it was like for her. A lifetime of experiences, influencing major decisions. Now I’m wondering what it was like for them.

Martha Miller is a Midwestern author whose latest book, Torrid Summer by Sapphire Press, came out June 1, 2024.

Beaver Girl
Cassie Premo Steele
Anxiety/Outcast Press, 2023, 260 pages
$16.00

Reviewed by Sarah Parsons

I am often wondering where all the climate stories are. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and general ecological collapse are, after all, among the most existential issues we face, are they not? Perhaps these stories are too impersonal, I sometimes think, or too bogged down in scientific jargon to be accessible or appealing to the average reader. Yet in Beaver Girl, a digestible and compelling dystopian novel, Cassie Premo Steele makes it clear that climate fiction is more present and engaging than ever.

Beaver Girl exists in a world which hints at an eerie but possible future for us all–a world ravaged by climate disaster, viruses, and general collapse. Within this world, which has largely seen an end to familiar capitalist systems, people have had to invent new ways of living. This is challenging, given that resources are in short supply and human contact carries the risk of disease or death. Yet, in the absence of all that is familiar, Steele creates a story of reconnection and returning to the ecosystems that we exist within.

The story follows two protagonists: a nineteen-year-old girl named Livia and Chap, the patriarch of a small beaver family. When a wildfire descends upon Livia’s community, she finds herself seeking a new home beyond the human world. Joining a large and rich canon of queer stories about chosen family, Beaver Girl shows the perspective of seeking family and connection beyond human terrain, which is what I find to be so unique about the novel. What lessons can we learn from the animals and plants living among us? Through the split perspectives between Livia and Chap, Steele highlights the varied struggles the characters face and the ways in which they learn to live in proximity to one another. As Livia deals with the aftermath of grief and loss while growing into her adulthood, Chap deals with the fear of caring for his family as his home is under threat. Steele seamlessly weaves ecological knowledge throughout the text, helping the reader access a deeper understanding of the characters (particularly the non-human beings) that populate the story.

Readers of all ages who enjoy dystopian fiction will likely connect with this book, though I think it is particularly suited to YA readers and those with a developing curiosity about the world we live in and the ecology that connects us all. This will also appeal to those like myself who appreciate the intersection between queer narratives and climate stories. What I find perhaps most effective about Cassie Premo Steele’s Beaver Girl is the ultimate sense of hope or resilience the reader is left with, which is endlessly important in stories about our changing world.

Sarah Parsons is a Sinister Wisdom intern and writer based in Oregon whose work can be found online in Paperbark Magazine.

Still Life
Katherine Packert Burke
Simon and Schuster, 2024, 272 pages
$28.99

Reviewed by Catherine Horowitz

Still Life, Katherine Packert Burke’s debut novel, is a heartfelt, candid, sometimes overcomplicated, always authentic, and ultimately singular tribute to queer friendship and relationships. Its main character, Edith, is a writer in her late twenties returning to Boston for the first time since living there for a few years after undergrad. Boston holds old friends, old haunts, an ex-girlfriend, and memories of a life she feels both removed from and still stuck in. The book moves between Edith’s visit and life back at home in Texas, and her memories of college and the years directly after.

The structure works well, moving back and forth between past and present in a way that generally feels seamless and purposeful. The present often feels trancelike and strange, while the past feels real and vivid. Dialogue is written in italics throughout both past and present, making the past feel not so distant and the present feel as blurry as a memory.

The three main characters, Edith, her ex, Tessa, and Valerie, their friend from college who has since died in a car crash, are clearly written with care and love. Many books attempt the challenge of authentically capturing what it is to be a young queer person alive in the twenty-first century. It’s a difficult thing to convey, but Burke does it beautifully.

Edith, Valerie, Tessa, and their friends all feel very real; they talk about things I talk about and act like people I know; they have similar interests, similar conflicts and feelings, and are frustrating in similar ways. I grew to feel real concern about Edith, and frustration at how stuck in her feelings she was. I was fond of Tessa’s Boston lesbian hangouts, with all their irritating characters, silly activities, and oscillation between belonging and not. I wanted to know exactly how these characters changed and what ultimately happened between them, which is revealed gradually and strategically throughout the first part of the book.

The second part of the book follows Edith’s current life in Texas alongside her evolving relationship with Valerie while in grad school. Valerie is a little less tangible as a character than Edith and Tessa, although she still felt recognizable. This, along with the absence of the first half’s clear trajectory, might be why this section was harder to become invested in.

I also initially found Still Life compelling because of its use of Sondheim, Edith’s personal soundtrack that she often uses to analyze her own life. Burke mainly references two musicals, Merrily We Roll Along and Into the Woods. The parallels to Merrily are obvious and articulated poignantly. Both works follow the trajectory of a group of three friends, ultimately explaining how their relationships become fractured and unrecognizable from how they began.

Into the Woods isn’t as clear. I truly understand the impulse to incorporate it, a cathartic classic for theater kids during lonely times, into one’s work. But Burke struggles a little to articulate its thematic connections to Still Life, instead complexly weaving lyrics and summary into the narrative. I wonder whether its use is effective for those who aren’t Sondheim lovers like me.

The theme of autofiction presents another intriguing throughline in Still Life. Edith is initially apprehensive of autofiction and hesitant to admit that she is working on it. She reflects on the genre, continuously reevaluating her work and ultimately writing the first line of Still Life itself, unsure of what it will lead to. This discussion may be meant as a sort of meta-reflection on autofiction, or an attempt from Burke to account for her own misapprehensions about it. I might not have read Still Life as autofiction otherwise, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have thought as heavily about the genre’s shortcomings while reading. I’m not sure whether this was Burke’s goal, but it warrants interesting conversation.

Despite its sometimes tangled themes and storylines, Still Life is mesmerizing, profound, and will stick with you. I find myself thinking back to the characters, and wondering whatever became of them. I can imagine a neater version—maybe one that ended after Edith left Boston—but at the same time, this version, messy, imperfect, and a little cumbersome, has its own kind of authenticity and beauty.

Catherine Horowitz is a writer and educator living in Washington, D.C. She earned a B.A. in English and Jewish Studies from Oberlin College. You can find her other work in Bright Wall/Dark Room, New Voices, and the Jewish Women’s Archive. She has previously worked with Sinister Wisdom on A Sturdy Yes of People: Selected Writings by Joan Nestle.

Perfume and Pain
Anna Dorn
Simon and Schuster, 2024, 352 pages
$18.99

Reviewed by Kelsey McGarry

In Perfume and Pain, Anna Dorn both pays homage and gives new life to a classic queer genre, lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s. Author Astrid Dahl attempts to revive her career after she finds herself in a situation that leaves her slightly canceled. While trying to rejoin a writer’s group she co-founded, she temporarily loses sight of her goal and finds herself enmeshed in several steamy, flirty detours, creating significant distractions.

Perfume and Pain takes us through Astrid’s life mid- and post-cultural reckoning. One of the key challenges she navigates is balancing flirty encounters with two scintillating women: one grad student and one neighbor. The neighbor, Penelope, is a painter, whom Astrid finds slightly off-putting but also irresistible. Astrid and Ivy, the graduate student, begin to date, leaving Astrid to navigate many conflicting feelings.

Astrid is then presented with the surprising professional opportunity to adapt one of her novels for television. She considers the possibility that this might resurrect her career, but the pressure is at times too much to bear. Wrapped up in a series of conflicts, Astrid confronts clashes internally and with those around her.

By many accounts, Astrid is not a woman that an audience would rush to champion. Yet author Anna Dorn writes her as deeply human with brutal honesty, providing exciting and transparent views into the character’s world.

Los Angeles and the greater Southern California region are also main characters in the novel, providing a rich and bright background for compelling action, as well as characters’ behaviors that are less savory. The issues Dorn explores within the Los Angeles region include: love and attraction that borders obsession; the joy and fun of professional success that can sour with fame, power, and access; the raw heat of both the climate and relationships that can burn out as quickly as they began.

Perfume and Pain is rich—full of energy, wit, and humor. The characters are unapologetically feminine, desirous, hot, creative, imperfect, and blunt. Through the entirety of the novel, Perfume and Pain scarcely ever drags, and Dorn trusts the reader to grasp the complex characters she crafts. The novel negotiates the conflicts among these characters until the very last page, providing an ambiguous yet satisfying end.

Kelsey McGarry is a Sinister Wisdom intern and volunteer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is interested in queer history and archiving, scheming, and being outside.

Felt in the Jaw
Kristen N. Arnett
Split/Lip Press, 2017, 220 pages
$16.00

Sarahland
Sam Cohen
Grand Central Publishing, 2021, 208 pages
$15.99

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories
Lydi Conklin
Catapult, 2023, 256 pages
$16.95

Reviewed by Grace Gaynor

Felt in the Jaw by Kristen Arnett, Sarahland by Sam Cohen, and Rainbow Rainbow by Lydi Conklin are short story collections linked by their representations of lesbian and queer identities through varying narrative styles and contexts. Each collection invests in a thorough examination of themes such as exploration, self-discovery, transformation, isolation, and connection. These common investigations build bridges between each of these vibrant collections, allowing their stories to stand out as unique examinations of identity.

Within each collection, exploration and self-discovery are represented through literal and figurative journeys. In Sarahland, characters are constantly searching for and finding new ways of expressing themselves and understanding the world. Readers are invited on this exploratory expedition through the lush, second-person narration of “Dream Palace,” the fourth piece in the collection. The narrator of “Dream Palace” places the reader within the story by simply stating, “Now you are Sarah. Here you go, driving down the highway…” (91) and later saying, “You’re running away, untethered, a girl and her car and a thousand dollars you’ve saved from tips. You want to start over you think and why not do it this way” (91). As we travel within the enormous building that is the Dream Palace, we are oriented to the experiences of a Sarah, becoming intrinsically embedded in the world of Sarahland. Similarly, “Playing Fetch,” from Felt in the Jaw uses the second-person to send the reader on the journey of coping with grief. As the characters discover life after loss, the reader is required to adjust at the same pace, as the narrative seamlessly immerses readers into the life and perspective of Danielle, the narrator.

Self-discovery is a central theme in Rainbow Rainbow, particularly in the story “Pioneer.” Coco, a fifth-grade student who has always felt inherently different from those around her, experiences moments of clarity as she goes through a simulation of the Oregon Trail with her classmates. Though she may not have the exact words to describe her realizations, the story culminates with Coco’s understanding that her journey of self-discovery is just beginning: “Really, the end of the simulation was just the beginning. Coco knew that now. Not even Ms. Harper could help her. She pulled away and turned to face the yellow field, the milkweed, the curved path of cones. The sun was a low white hole in the sky. She would go on her journey now. She would set off” (108). In this moment, Coco realizes that her survival depends on her willingness to explore the reality of her gender nonconformity and identity. She understands she must embrace the things that disconnect and differentiate her from her peers.

Connection and isolation are explored at length in each collection, as these themes often serve as the foundation of narratives centered on lesbian and queer identities. In one instance, Felt in the Jaw’s “Blessing of the Animals” depicts the difficulty of isolation as Moira is severed from her church family and lifelong dream of a large, conventional wedding when her pastor casually refuses to perform a traditional ceremony for her and her partner. The narrative quietly represents the feelings of loneliness and isolation that come with embracing queer identity, while emphasizing the value of gaining sustenance from acceptance and connection through images of Moira’s supportive partnership.

This theme of sustenance through connection is similarly explored within “Pink Knives,” the third story in Rainbow Rainbow. The narrative opens with the following images: “We meet in the plague. Your gray roots have grown out four or five inches into the red—we’re that deep in. We sit on opposite hips of a circle printed on the grass in a crowded public park in San Francisco” (57). The narrator, after describing the circumstances in which the two main characters meet, discusses those around them in a swirl of connection, at odds with the aforementioned “plague”:

Around us are first-date kisses, teens huddled dangerously close together on tarps, techies dancing to rubberized jewel-toned radios. Everyone massing into Dolores Park for whatever they need: sex, friendship, family, work meetings, chess lessons, air, rigorous jump rope, letting their toddlers scream like wolves, pudgy arms extended, anticipating a fall (57).

Against a backdrop of isolation imposed by uncertainty and illness, the main character makes connections that provide them with new insight into the reality of their gender identity. In this way, Rainbow Rainbow’s “Pink Knives” is a story about queer survival and the ways isolation and connection, though often at odds with each other, might work in tandem to provide us with self-knowledge.

Connection is further explored in Sarahland’s “Exorcism, or Eating My Twin,” as Cohen explores the formation of an intense bond between two characters. The narrator, Sarah, speaks intensely about her “twin,” whom she has renamed Tegan: “It turned out, of course, that we’d both been solitary children, obsessed with Stephen King and Tori Amos. We’d both grown up lying on quilted girlbeds biting our cuticles and feeling an intense sense of missing, of pining for a twin” (70). These perceived similarities between the two characters escalate Sarah’s feelings of attachment and dependence. When the seemingly sudden severance of the connection forces her to exist on her own once again, she struggles to make a life outside of her relationship with Tegan. The emphasis placed upon this struggle makes this narrative a contemplation of the ways isolation and connection work together to create charged relationships imbued with unwieldy power.

Each collection also explores the way long-term relationships and the people within them transform over time. Felt in the Jaw’s “Aberrations in Flight” depicts a growing distance between two partners set against a backdrop of death and the complications associated with house renovation, which magnify the tedium within the relationship. As the story comes to a close, the narrator, Amber, realizes that her partner, Elizabeth, is no longer the person she fell in love with and asks: “How do you reconcile loving two different versions of a person?” (188). The first story in Rainbow Rainbow, “Laramie Time,” seeks to answer this question in the context of the uncertainty and doubt embedded in their struggling relationship. Leigh, the story’s narrator, is torn between continuing her difficult relationship or coping with the pain of leaving a person she loves, a turmoil represented when she says: “This person had lied to me. She was happier than she could admit; she was thriving. My heart lifted for her joy, even if it was separate from me” (28). In the end, the dissolution of the partnership allows the story to stand out as a meditation on the impact of insurmountable change on a relationship.

“Becoming Trees,” the eighth story in Sarahland, opens with a line that centers on the pressure associated with transformation: “It began in the season when everyone was changing” (155). The narrator discusses the tension related to this overwhelming sense of change, noting that “it seemed like everyone was wrapping themselves in chrysali and having late-in-life emergences as different kinds of creatures, and what this made clear was that we weren’t becoming anything. We felt like caterpillars who didn’t know that being a caterpillar wasn’t the endgame” (155). This lack of becoming dramatically impacts the narrative’s main couple, Jan and Sarah, who feel inadequate in their lives and relationships as normal people. Soon, they make the decision to trade in their physical bodies and become trees, hoping to strengthen their relationship and escape the expectations of a rigid society. In the same way, the stories within Sarahland transform and shift the expectations associated with traditional narrative structures and systems. Retellings, recastings, and refusals support the queer power of this collection.

Each of these story collections hold valuable perspectives on human experience, most notably in the context of identity and connection. The experience of reading these collections comparatively might allow readers to gain new understandings of themselves and others.

Grace Gaynor is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. She earned her BA in English from Hollins University and is currently an MFA student studying creative writing at Virginia Tech. She is a Sinister Wisdom intern and serves as an editor for the minnesota review and SUNHOUSE Literary.

Still Alive
LJ Pemberton
Malarkey Books, 2024, 290 pages
$19.00

Reviewed by Rae Theodore

LJ Pemberton’s Still Alive is a raw, evocative exploration of love, self-discovery, and the relentless quest for meaning against the backdrop of a fractured American landscape. The novel traces the tumultuous journey of V, a bisexual temp worker whose life is intricately entangled with Lex, a butch painter. Pemberton’s narrative deftly captures the poignant complexities of V’s relationships and personal growth, weaving a story that is both deeply intimate and widely resonant.

From the moment V meets Lex at an underground punk show, their chemistry ignites a whirlwind romance that drives much of the novel’s emotional core. “We’re waiting and she says her name is Lex. The x trips off like every other name is lacking without it” (17). Pemberton’s prose is both lyrical and incisive, capturing the dynamics of love, heartbreak, and obsession. I found myself going back and re-reading sentences to let the words roll around on my tongue a little longer.

Lex, with her artistic flair and strong presence, becomes a central figure in V’s search for stability and identity. “There was poetry in the way she carried groceries from the store. There was meaning in the way she ignored responsibility. I wanted her. I wanted to be her. I barely knew myself,” V acknowledges (22).

However, their on-again, off-again relationship is far from idyllic, punctuated by the dysfunction of V’s family, which looms over her like a specter. “The problem is I know how it all ends, in blood and quiet, and I learned that final lesson when I was too young to know what was routine and what was unusual and how everyone mixes up the two,” V says (276).

In parallel, the novel examines V’s relationship with Leroy, her gay best friend, who has chosen a more serene rural existence. Leroy’s peaceful life serves as a foil to V’s restless pursuit of meaning, highlighting her internal conflict and dissatisfaction. Pemberton skillfully portrays V’s inability to find contentment, whether in the structured routines of temp work or the conventional expectations of mainstream life.

Pemberton’s narrative is not merely a chronicle of V’s romantic entanglements and family discord–it’s also a profound meditation on the search for personal freedom and authenticity. V’s restless journey across the United States from New York City to Portland to Los Angeles symbolizes her broader quest for self-fulfillment and a life defined on her terms.

Still Alive is a modern-day Rubyfruit Jungle that will resonate with anyone who has ever grappled with finding their place in a world that seems perpetually at odds with their true self. If you’ve rarely found yourself represented in a book, you just might catch a glimpse of yourself in Pemberton’s.

Rae Theodore (she/they) is the author of the memoir collections Leaving Normal and My Mother Says Drums Are for Boys and the poetry chapbook How to Sit Like a Lesbian. She is the story curator for the new anthology Swagger: A Celebration of the Butch Experience.