Little Fish, by Casey Plett
Wendy, the main character of Little Fish, is a 30-year-old transgender woman living in Winnipeg. The fact that she’s trans puts her at odds with the Mennonite community of her childhood, though she’s close to her dad, Ben, who’s not a very religious or observant Mennonite, and is a great character. Wendy’s life is pretty chaotic: she and her friends live on the margins, balancing a combination of unstable jobs, potentially dangerous sex work, mental health issues, and addictions.
The “hook” that initially pulled me into this novel is that Wendy hears a rumour that her late grandfather, a devout Mennonite farmer, might have been secretly gay or even transgender. She’s conflicted about following up on this, as doing so will send her back into a world she’s left behind. In the end, she does have one long conversation with the person who told her this, and reads one of her grandfather’s old letters — but it’s not much to go on, and I was so curious to delve deeper into the grandfather story and the impact it would have on Wendy. This is another typical case where the book is good, but the story the writer wanted to tell is not necessarily the story I was most interested in reading, and that’s no-one’s fault, just a disconnect between reader and writer.
The main thing I felt while reading this book — and this is true of a lot of literary fiction written by younger writers featuring characters in their 20s and early 30s — was just sad for the characters, because their lives seems so unhappy. (I bounced this reaction off Emma, saying “are all the young people really so sad?” and she said, “Maybe just the writers.” There might be something to that). Wendy is a great and beautifully drawn character, but I would have liked to feel more hope about her life (especially about her fairly evident alcoholism, which is a major theme but never really dealt with in the story, but I guess that’s true about a lot of people’s real lives also). I should also add as a content note that there’s a lot more graphic sexual detail in this novel than I’m personally comfortable with — again, something I find pretty frequently with literary fiction — and I know I’m a bit of a prudish reader in that way, but it’s definitely something you’d want to be aware of.
I guess the main thing I can say is that I thought this book was very good and beautifully written, but I didn’t fully enjoy the experience of reading it, because it did make me sad and a lot of the questions that arose throughout the book for me were not really answered.
