A SAFE GIRL TO LOVE

A new edition of Plett’s debut collection resurfaces 11 thoughtful stories exploring the lives of young trans women as they attempt to carve out space for themselves, set often in Canada and the Pacific Northwest.

Sophie returns to Winnipeg to spend the holidays with family. Lizzy and Annie wake up in bed together and begin a new relationship. Zoe helps her mother pack up her childhood home in Eugene, Oregon. These snippets of everyday life include friends with blue hair and blue hoodies that make them look like “an angry drunken Skittle” or text messages from parents that read, “Your room is a shithole. I love you!” They also come with an ever present tension, a feeling that the other shoe could drop at any moment. Many of Plett’s characters seem to sense this for themselves. In ways ranging from fun to awkward, from endearing to heartbreaking, they grapple with what it might mean for their physical or emotional safety. This subtle foreboding is particularly well served by the use of second-person narration, as deployed in stories like “How to Stay Friends.” Here, the narrator walks you through a dinner between exes and outlines what “you” should do next. It’s an exercise that becomes blisteringly painful when “you” recount the stalking and harassment you’ve experienced post-transition and then have to wait to see how your ex-girlfriend will respond. Will she commiserate? Attribute it to life as a woman? Offer advice about how to protect yourself? Blame it on your choices? It’s one of many scenes that evoke the feeling of holding your breath and that seem to hang in the air for a long while after rather than fully or easily resolving. In these cases, the focus is less on what happens than on what could.

A collection driven by deeply human, sometimes humorous, but always exquisitely rendered details.