Casey Plett

Arsenal Pulp Press

Award-winning novelist Casey Plett (Little Fish) returns with a poignant suite of stories that center transgender women.

A Dream of a Woman

Fraser Simons

The thing I like about this the most is how organic everything feels. Interactions and relationships feel not only believable, but textured. Sparse prose. Accessible. Does not engage in pain olympics like so much fiction that gets published demands of non cis white het narratives. Encapsulates nuanced of Canadian life and culture, again, easily, dynamically, and casually. 

It’s a deceptively complex, writing something that gels and appears seamless. To keep a reader going when it’s “just” a daily, lived experience that is nuanced and real in a messy way, non-after-school-special way. Heck, I’d wager it’s tough to keep someone reading where any character is just dealing with an hollywoodized problem. Where conflict isn’t charged in to pick up a pace. Or where the inciting incident isn’t the hook for the short story. 

This is great story craft. And where other short stories suffer, with a lack of cohesiveness and an uneven collection for a reader, this chooses to plot a through line with a series of interconnected short stories between the ones that are a big incongruous. Very smart choice, structurally and I was surprised at how affecting the story became broken up that way as well. Essentially egg to fully realized identity, but the subtle ways, especially around a messy relationship across it, was really well handled and deftly conveyed some internalized issues with both parties. 

Bit criminal this didn’t at least make the short list, imo. By far and away beats out a couple of them, in my mind. The only jagged edges I could spot, which is why this is a 4.5 rounded up, is with some dialogue—only in certain stories. Where it was a bit stilted and felt like it changed the voice of the character to have something specific come across. One other very short story I didn’t connect with the voice on. And that’s why that throughline was an absolutely fantastic idea. Very impressed. Perhaps the only 5 star short story collection I’ve read. I can’t remember another off hand, anyway.

A Dream of a Woman

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