What do you think?
Rate this book
Little Blue Encyclopedia
Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. The playful and poignant novel LITTLE BLUE ENCYCLOPEDIA (FOR VIVIAN) sifts through a queer trans woman's unrequited love for her straight trans friend who died. A queer love letter steeped in desire, grief, and delight, the story is interspersed with encyclopedia entries about a fictional TV show set on an isolated island. The experimental form functions at once as a manual for how pop culture can help soothe and mend us and as an exploration of oft-overlooked sources of pleasure, including karaoke, birding, and butt toys. Ultimately, LITTLE BLUE ENCYCLOPEDIA (FOR VIVIAN) reveals with glorious detail and emotional nuance the woman the narrator loved, why she loved her, and the depths of what she has lost.
200 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2019
82 people are currently reading
6996 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 364 reviews
December 2, 2021
One of the best books I've ever read! A wonderfully unique combination of character study, a letter to grief, a celebration of trans women, and an innovative format: an encyclopedia centered on a fictional TV show called "Little Blue."
Our narrator, with the kind of authentic mesmerizing voice that immediately captures you, is a queer trans woman who has just lost her best friend Vivian, a straight trans woman who, it turns out, was the love of her life.
Stumbling through her grief, she ends up channeling it through writing. The best format, it turns out, is an encyclopedia dedicated to Vivian's favourite TV show, a cult classic with a small devoted following, the kind of show fans watch over and over, catching new details and coming up with new fan theories every time. Of course, the encyclopedia is just as much about Vivian--and our narrator--as it is the show.
The book traces the women's friendship, the narrator's relationship with her brother and Vivian's sister, and talks a lot about art: its power to soothe life's grief, oppression--everything that feels unbearable.
Plante's artistry is stunning. Little Blue Encyclopedia is about a TV show with a cult following, but the book itself is similarly art that inspires that kind of devotion. "Little Blue" couldn't feel more real, with every detail so meticulously crafted it's easy to forget while you're reading that it isn't actually a real series! The same could be said of all the characters, even the secondary ones: they are full of authenticity and heart.
The end of this book made me sob: heart broken but hopeful, sad but full of love. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how very very funny this book is too. It's the best combination.
Our narrator, with the kind of authentic mesmerizing voice that immediately captures you, is a queer trans woman who has just lost her best friend Vivian, a straight trans woman who, it turns out, was the love of her life.
Stumbling through her grief, she ends up channeling it through writing. The best format, it turns out, is an encyclopedia dedicated to Vivian's favourite TV show, a cult classic with a small devoted following, the kind of show fans watch over and over, catching new details and coming up with new fan theories every time. Of course, the encyclopedia is just as much about Vivian--and our narrator--as it is the show.
The book traces the women's friendship, the narrator's relationship with her brother and Vivian's sister, and talks a lot about art: its power to soothe life's grief, oppression--everything that feels unbearable.
Plante's artistry is stunning. Little Blue Encyclopedia is about a TV show with a cult following, but the book itself is similarly art that inspires that kind of devotion. "Little Blue" couldn't feel more real, with every detail so meticulously crafted it's easy to forget while you're reading that it isn't actually a real series! The same could be said of all the characters, even the secondary ones: they are full of authenticity and heart.
The end of this book made me sob: heart broken but hopeful, sad but full of love. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention how very very funny this book is too. It's the best combination.
April 25, 2025
maybe even 2.5… it was totally incoherent in every way and lacked any insight or emotion. so much potential with the experimental premise absolutely squandered
February 20, 2020
Hazel Jane Plante's novel Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) is a spectacular debut: hilarious, moving, and endlessly inventive. The novel is constructed as an encyclopedia for a fictional television series that has all of the quirk of Twin Peaks with none of the menace, created as an extended eulogy for the queer trans woman narrator's late best friend and secret love, a straight trans woman named Vivian.
There's so much to love here. It is a portrait of grief infused with a melancholic humour that prevents it from becoming overwrought. Plante captures contemporary trans women's communities fully, in all of our messiness, our bitchiness, our nerdiness. Like so many of us, she knows what it means to lose one of our sisters, but unlike most of us, she skillfully writes her way through it.
It is such a gorgeous book, made all the better that it came to me as a gift from a lover.
There's so much to love here. It is a portrait of grief infused with a melancholic humour that prevents it from becoming overwrought. Plante captures contemporary trans women's communities fully, in all of our messiness, our bitchiness, our nerdiness. Like so many of us, she knows what it means to lose one of our sisters, but unlike most of us, she skillfully writes her way through it.
It is such a gorgeous book, made all the better that it came to me as a gift from a lover.
May 15, 2020
Beautiful. I cried so much.
I wrote more here: https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/5/13...
I wrote more here: https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/5/13...
July 13, 2021
I don't totally know how I feel about Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian). I am, quite obviously, not the intended audience for the book, so what I think doesn't matter a whole lot. I also have very little experience with memoir-style trans fiction -- just this and Imogen Binnie's Nevada, which is (to put it mildly) a very different kind of book. That said, I'm going to reference Nevada a few times here, and I admit in advance that this probably isn't fair, but my points of reference are what they are.
I will say that there was a lot about Little Blue... that really surprised me. For a book that is impossible to explain to someone without sounding like a pretentious stuffed shirt, in practice it's disarmingly straightforward. The protagonist (a trans woman who is named, but whose name is a bit of a spoiler) explains in the first chapter exactly how the book is constructed: quite literally, as an encyclopedia-style analysis of a Twin Peaks-esque TV show that is also a series of memories about a best friend (Vivian), also a trans woman, who's recently passed. Then, the narrator does that promised thing (analysis + memories) for the rest of the book. The end. The simplicity and ease of the reading experience, the total non-experimentalness of the actual product, was illuminating and impressive.
The second thing that really surprised me was the extent to which Plante is willing to mix her fabricated TV show with media from the real world. Some of the cast of the Little Blue TV show are real-life actors; some are not. Some of the other TV shows and movies she references to compare/describe Little Blue are real, some are not. Sometimes she'll name a real show but invent an episode, described scene by scene in detail. It's all fun and games until she gives you a real street address in Amsterdam that you can mail money to in order to get a Little Blue fanzine mailed to you by a fictional fan of the show named Lucy Six. The address, in real life, is for the Collection Six, a private art gallery in the house of the Six family. Do I want to mail real money to this address and see if I hear from Lucy Six? Oh dear god yes I do.
And the third thing that is really impressive, that makes the stuff in the above paragraph feel nuanced and lived-in rather than performative, is that the protagonist/narrator is not an exceptional or showy writer. She says at one point that she's a journalist, but you don't get the sense that she's written a lot. The prose says what it needs to, but never sounds "writerly." It's a book that tells, but does not show. This is a book that takes some deep dives on transitioning and queerness and sex, but does so in a way that is almost always pretty chaste. If Nevada is a book that's willing to get almost clinically nitty-gritty about the day-to-day biological struggles of being a trans woman, Little Blue... keeps things pretty PG-13, even if it does (as the backmatter indicates) have an entire section on butt toys.
There's one section in which the narrator describes something that Vivan once did to annoy her, and then she writes "Grrr." This is absolutely the most in-voice passage in the book. It is absolutely a story being told to you by the kind of person who writes "Grr" to express frustration.
Anyway, so the point I'm getting at is that the level of structural complexity (deep) clashes loudly with the level of emotional depth/linguistic performance being displayed by the narrator (not really deep at all). This is supposed to be a book about the loss of a friend. I have lost friends. Most of us have. And while there are parts of the book I, as a cis man, couldn't really access emotionally (and wouldn't expect to), the basic feeling of loss is something I have experience with. It surprised me how little the pain of greiving is really explored. I can't tell if this is part of the construction of the narrator as a character (who is pretty repressed, and knows it, but maybe doesn't totally know it, you know?), or if it's just something that was never developed. I question the intentionality of the lack of emotional exploration that I found in a book that is ostensibly supposed to be about loss and grieving, is what I'm trying to say.
The other thing (connected to that last thing) is that I don't really think I came away liking Vivian, and I feel like the narrator (and maybe Plante as well) really wants me to like Vivian. By the end of the book, it's clear that this friendship (the "love of my life", according to the narrator) is pretty one-sided. It also seems like the other characters in the book know this, and are gently trying to tell the narrator that Vivian did not care about her (or maybe anyone) as much as the narrator cared about Vivian. And while Vivian might not have owed the narrator the same level of emotional investment, it's maybe (maybe, ever-so-slightly) implied that Vivian could have taken a little bit more ownership over her side of the friendship in order to address the narrator's (nakedly transparent) feelings for her.
"She was pretty flawed," Vivian's friends and loved ones keep saying to the narrator, over and over. But the narrator won't hear it (even if she does transcribe it so we can hear it). She also refuses to discuss how Vivian died, to the point that this mystery seems like a climax we're going to build to. There's an extremely brief allusion to violence against trans women, but nothing else: instead, there are far more indications that Vivian
So I guess the argument could be made here that if this book is about something just in terms of their relationship, maybe this IS intentional: maybe this is a story about a one-sided friendship (bordering on obsession) with a perfectly-sort-of-fine-but-als0-maybe-kinda-sucky person, and the most realistic thing that could happen after that person dies is .... nothing. In a more traditional narrative, the narrator would have this Big Realization that Vivian wasn't the be-all-end-all, and would probably meet someone else who values her more, and would sort of let go of Vivian while holding onto the parts of Vivian she liked, and the parts that helped her to love herself, etc etc. A little trite, but a story arc nonetheless.
And in Little Blue... there are the lightest shadows of all those ideas, but absolutely none of them follow through. About three quarters of the way through the book I said to myself, "Wait, are we going anywhere with this? Is this narrator going to go through any...uh...narrative changes? Is there going to be a story at any point?"
And like, you learn some pivotal stuff at the very end -- about why Vivian was so important to the narrator's life, and in terms of the narrator's personal development this stuff is pretty crucial. But the point is that within the scope of the book we are reading, Little Blue... is much more about capturing an extremely brief, unchanging point in the narrator's grieving process, in which she is still blindly in love with Vivian and sort of sad about it but more like, intellectually sad than really, y'know, actually sad.
I think the emotional crux of the book has much more to do with capturing moments of the narrator's experience as a trans woman navigating the world, and as a cis man this material didn't hit as hard for me as, like, the moment-by-moment intensity of a book like Nevada. But Nevada doesn't have to be the only point of comparison here. Rather than another book about trans women we could take another work about grief instead, like Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Guilt, anxiety, dread, self-loathing, longing -- this is how I experience grief. But despite a very poignant opening chapter, despite her obsession with Vivian, despite having a few moments where she describes herself breaking into spontaneous tears, through most of the book it never really feels like the protagonist of Little Blue... is digging particularly deep on this stuff at all.
It may be that the emotional resonance I'm looking for doesn't exist in Little Blue ... because this is not, in fact, a book about one friend grieving the loss of another. If Vivian perhaps just enjoyed being adored, then it could be argued that the narrator also used Vivian as something to aspire to -- an idea, rather than a person. Vivian is described as confident, vibrant, idiosyncratic, beautiful, sexy, and fascinating -- but never as loving. This book could be about that too.
I will say that there was a lot about Little Blue... that really surprised me. For a book that is impossible to explain to someone without sounding like a pretentious stuffed shirt, in practice it's disarmingly straightforward. The protagonist (a trans woman who is named, but whose name is a bit of a spoiler) explains in the first chapter exactly how the book is constructed: quite literally, as an encyclopedia-style analysis of a Twin Peaks-esque TV show that is also a series of memories about a best friend (Vivian), also a trans woman, who's recently passed. Then, the narrator does that promised thing (analysis + memories) for the rest of the book. The end. The simplicity and ease of the reading experience, the total non-experimentalness of the actual product, was illuminating and impressive.
The second thing that really surprised me was the extent to which Plante is willing to mix her fabricated TV show with media from the real world. Some of the cast of the Little Blue TV show are real-life actors; some are not. Some of the other TV shows and movies she references to compare/describe Little Blue are real, some are not. Sometimes she'll name a real show but invent an episode, described scene by scene in detail. It's all fun and games until she gives you a real street address in Amsterdam that you can mail money to in order to get a Little Blue fanzine mailed to you by a fictional fan of the show named Lucy Six. The address, in real life, is for the Collection Six, a private art gallery in the house of the Six family. Do I want to mail real money to this address and see if I hear from Lucy Six? Oh dear god yes I do.
And the third thing that is really impressive, that makes the stuff in the above paragraph feel nuanced and lived-in rather than performative, is that the protagonist/narrator is not an exceptional or showy writer. She says at one point that she's a journalist, but you don't get the sense that she's written a lot. The prose says what it needs to, but never sounds "writerly." It's a book that tells, but does not show. This is a book that takes some deep dives on transitioning and queerness and sex, but does so in a way that is almost always pretty chaste. If Nevada is a book that's willing to get almost clinically nitty-gritty about the day-to-day biological struggles of being a trans woman, Little Blue... keeps things pretty PG-13, even if it does (as the backmatter indicates) have an entire section on butt toys.
There's one section in which the narrator describes something that Vivan once did to annoy her, and then she writes "Grrr." This is absolutely the most in-voice passage in the book. It is absolutely a story being told to you by the kind of person who writes "Grr" to express frustration.
Anyway, so the point I'm getting at is that the level of structural complexity (deep) clashes loudly with the level of emotional depth/linguistic performance being displayed by the narrator (not really deep at all). This is supposed to be a book about the loss of a friend. I have lost friends. Most of us have. And while there are parts of the book I, as a cis man, couldn't really access emotionally (and wouldn't expect to), the basic feeling of loss is something I have experience with. It surprised me how little the pain of greiving is really explored. I can't tell if this is part of the construction of the narrator as a character (who is pretty repressed, and knows it, but maybe doesn't totally know it, you know?), or if it's just something that was never developed. I question the intentionality of the lack of emotional exploration that I found in a book that is ostensibly supposed to be about loss and grieving, is what I'm trying to say.
The other thing (connected to that last thing) is that I don't really think I came away liking Vivian, and I feel like the narrator (and maybe Plante as well) really wants me to like Vivian. By the end of the book, it's clear that this friendship (the "love of my life", according to the narrator) is pretty one-sided. It also seems like the other characters in the book know this, and are gently trying to tell the narrator that Vivian did not care about her (or maybe anyone) as much as the narrator cared about Vivian. And while Vivian might not have owed the narrator the same level of emotional investment, it's maybe (maybe, ever-so-slightly) implied that Vivian could have taken a little bit more ownership over her side of the friendship in order to address the narrator's (nakedly transparent) feelings for her.
"She was pretty flawed," Vivian's friends and loved ones keep saying to the narrator, over and over. But the narrator won't hear it (even if she does transcribe it so we can hear it). She also refuses to discuss how Vivian died, to the point that this mystery seems like a climax we're going to build to. There's an extremely brief allusion to violence against trans women, but nothing else: instead, there are far more indications that Vivian
So I guess the argument could be made here that if this book is about something just in terms of their relationship, maybe this IS intentional: maybe this is a story about a one-sided friendship (bordering on obsession) with a perfectly-sort-of-fine-but-als0-maybe-kinda-sucky person, and the most realistic thing that could happen after that person dies is .... nothing. In a more traditional narrative, the narrator would have this Big Realization that Vivian wasn't the be-all-end-all, and would probably meet someone else who values her more, and would sort of let go of Vivian while holding onto the parts of Vivian she liked, and the parts that helped her to love herself, etc etc. A little trite, but a story arc nonetheless.
And in Little Blue... there are the lightest shadows of all those ideas, but absolutely none of them follow through. About three quarters of the way through the book I said to myself, "Wait, are we going anywhere with this? Is this narrator going to go through any...uh...narrative changes? Is there going to be a story at any point?"
And like, you learn some pivotal stuff at the very end -- about why Vivian was so important to the narrator's life, and in terms of the narrator's personal development this stuff is pretty crucial. But the point is that within the scope of the book we are reading, Little Blue... is much more about capturing an extremely brief, unchanging point in the narrator's grieving process, in which she is still blindly in love with Vivian and sort of sad about it but more like, intellectually sad than really, y'know, actually sad.
I think the emotional crux of the book has much more to do with capturing moments of the narrator's experience as a trans woman navigating the world, and as a cis man this material didn't hit as hard for me as, like, the moment-by-moment intensity of a book like Nevada. But Nevada doesn't have to be the only point of comparison here. Rather than another book about trans women we could take another work about grief instead, like Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Guilt, anxiety, dread, self-loathing, longing -- this is how I experience grief. But despite a very poignant opening chapter, despite her obsession with Vivian, despite having a few moments where she describes herself breaking into spontaneous tears, through most of the book it never really feels like the protagonist of Little Blue... is digging particularly deep on this stuff at all.
It may be that the emotional resonance I'm looking for doesn't exist in Little Blue ... because this is not, in fact, a book about one friend grieving the loss of another. If Vivian perhaps just enjoyed being adored, then it could be argued that the narrator also used Vivian as something to aspire to -- an idea, rather than a person. Vivian is described as confident, vibrant, idiosyncratic, beautiful, sexy, and fascinating -- but never as loving. This book could be about that too.
April 21, 2020
Everything I want in a book: formal play, a sense of humor, queer and trans people, emotional heft... I fucking loved this. It's a celebration of Vivian, the narrator's recently passed friend, written in the form of an encyclopedia of characters from Vivian's favorite TV show. That show, Little Blue, is (hooray!) fictional, very place-based, brilliantly absurd (Twin Peaks-ish with a little bit of Buffy and Gilmore Girls), and there's an impressive density to the fictional world building even as it winkingly slips and slides into the familiar real. I've been reading so much terrific nonfiction that appraoch the personal through art objects and/or other figures -- this is unique in using that same strategy in a fictive mode -- and it is deeply committed to fictiveness! Even the more throwaway fictive references (Henry James played by Jim Broadbent, for example, in a fictional film called The James Gang, made by the (fictional) creator of (the fictional) Little Blue, and based on the realization that (actual) outlaws Jesse and Frank James were contemporaries of (actual) intellectuals William and Henry James), are inspired and hilarious. The book is also, and importantly, committed to honoring trans life, and the joy of trans friendship, in the wake of devastating loss. It is a warm book, full of love and charm.
January 20, 2022
A beautiful love letter to a friend who has passed. A love letter to queer love. A love letter to self love and self acceptance. A love letter to pop culture bringing communities together in the best way possible.
Perfect little read with the perfect ending. “And I still love you with my queer little heart.”
Perfect little read with the perfect ending. “And I still love you with my queer little heart.”
February 1, 2022
A kaleidoscope of grief, a manual for mourning, but also a celebration of friendship and survival that breaks you and warms your little grinch heart all in one.
Just so gosh darn special, and truly unlike anything I've read before.
4.5
Like going for a walk through the woods with an arborist, who not only identifies every species of tree around you, but also shares unexpected tidbits about them.
Just so gosh darn special, and truly unlike anything I've read before.
4.5
Like going for a walk through the woods with an arborist, who not only identifies every species of tree around you, but also shares unexpected tidbits about them.
March 26, 2025
This was recommended to me when I was looking for more contemporary litfic ages ago, but which I’m (as usual) only finally getting around to now. It is not quite the most intensely ‘contemporary litfic’ I have ever read, but it – a postmodern mediation on queer grief and book-length character study, structured around the framing device of a fan encyclopedia of a tv show that does not exist – is very high on the list. The encyclopedia conceit failed to ever really cohere and ended up being less than the sum of it’s parts, but I found the book a deceptively deep and interesting read – well, either that or I’m reading far too much into it, but the author is dead and all that.
The book is written as a memorial and eulogy to Vivian, the narrator’s best friend, inspiration in living as a trans woman and (it rapidly becomes clear) desperately unrequited love, after she dies from some unspecified cause. Overcome with grief and desperate for any way to properly honour and remember her, the narrator sets upon the extremely strange cult tv show Vivian loved dearly and that the two of them spent so many hours and days watching and bonding over – and decides to create an encyclopedia of every character in it. The book itself is divided from A-Z, with each section including entries on characters from the (nonexistent) tv show Little Blue, trivia about the show as a whole, and related (if at times tenuously) context and anecdotes about Vivian, the narrator, and their history and friendship (as well as how the narrator’s life is going as she writes and grieves).
The book has an incredibly voice running through it. The narrator – she does have a name, but insomuch as anything in this counts as spoiler, it probably does? - is just an achingly specific person, just about the only kind of person who would actually create something like this for public consumption, and it comes through with every word choice. The style and prose itself isn’t really much to write home about, but it’s not really trying to be – it’s trying to read like a somewhat uncomfortably vulnerable and emotionally open personal essay (or one of the better edited class of long, confessional tumblr posts) published in the later 2010s. This it achieves perfectly – the narrator is a Canadian trans woman in either Toronto or Vancouver with a lot of nerdy and artistic interests, vaguely attached to the activist scene and pursuing a degree in journalism, and yeah basically every word choice and reference used fits her absolutely perfectly. The book does an excellent job communicating both what she’s trying to and the emotions and awkward baggage that piling up in the corner of her eye, too.
The book is, almost as much as grief or trans-ness, about art and your relationship to it – and the difference between that relationship and it’s meaning to you, and the thing as it actually exists. Little Blue – the show – is described at length and it sounds like, well, mostly like an overstuffed mess; like Twin Peaks but with most of the themes and narrative tension replaced by an endless series of tangents (even by comparison). From an interview with a minor actor included in the book, production seems to have been a mess full of divas, and the show was unceremoniously cancelled after one season, living on only through the efforts of a small but dedicated fan community enchanted by how densely it packs easter eggs and bits of trivia into every frame. But none of that really matters to our narrator – she loves the show, because watching it with Vivian and bonding with her over it was an (maybe the most) important part of how she bounded with her; the secondhand love and the way that re-watching and thinking about Little Blue lets her feel connected with Vivian brightens the experience of watching the show that it’s actual quality is almost besides the point.
Which works as far as it goes, but does leave the amount of wordcount spent on the actual ‘encyclopedia’ portions of the book and the anecdotes about the show feel a bit like empty calories. I kept waiting for all the trivia about the show to tie together into something coherent, or rhyme in some deep and profound way with the narrator or Vivian’s life story. Instead it was kind of just one damn thing after another. It honestly took me some time into the book to even realize it was supposed to be a live action drama – everything described seemed far more natural as a Steven Universe or Gravity Falls style wacky children’s cartoon (right down to the bits of trivia and hints of characterization hidden in seemingly every frame for obsessive fans), not an attempt at early 2000s prestige drama. Which, again, does all fit perfectly with the book’s themes – but it also makes spending so much of the book’s actual wordcount describing the show in such loving detail an...interesting choice.
Outside of the narrator and Vivian, the book’s characters are broad and thinly sketched out – but that’s quite alright, because Vivian is one of the most vividly and believably drawn characters I can recall ever reading. By the end of the book, she genuinely felt like a real living human I could have known, richly detailed and filled with the sort of vital, self-contradicting energy so few works of fiction really manage. (She also sounds like she would have been absolutely exhausting to be around for any length of time or keep up a friendship with, but in very similar ways to several real people I’ve known, so). The entire book really is a love letter to her, an admission love the narrator was never quite self-aware enough to realize she had while Vivian was still alive.
Which lends the book a bit of a tragic undertone, no matter how soft and affirming everything the narrator consciously writes is. She couldn’t realize she was desperately in love with Vivian, but over the course of the book it becomes pretty clear that she was literally the only one. Even beyond basic incompatibility (the narrator spends no small amount of time pondering how inexplicably and tragically straight Vivian was, and has one complaint or another I think every man she ever expressed any attraction to), over the course of the book it becomes increasingly obvious that Vivian was a far larger and more vital part of her life than she was of hers. It’s only after Vivian dies that she really comes to learn about whole swathes of her life – and even then, she nearly explicitly chooses to learn the details of and memorialize a somewhat airbrushed version of her.
All of which is intimately related to the fact that, despite pretty profound differences (in style, personality, sexuality), the narrator has very clearly put Vivian up on something of a pedestal as her inspiration and model for how joyful and fearless a life a trans woman can live – someone she desperately looks up to, even as she ruefully talks about not being nearly brave enough to live such a vulnerable life. Which is the same reason she provides no detail at all about how Vivian actually died except for specifying that it wasn’t suicide. (The whole book (not the book-as-fictional-object, the work of art by Plante) is deeply interested and invested in how trans women live and love and the multipage aside about suicide and why you shouldn’t do it was, if heavy-handed, also quite affecting).
Does the pitch of ‘a postmodern mediation on queer grief and book-length character study, structured around the framing device of a fan encyclopedia of a tv show that does not exist’ instantly make your eyes glaze over? Then don’t read this. But if it sounds intriguing, than on the whole I did find this really quite charming.
The book is written as a memorial and eulogy to Vivian, the narrator’s best friend, inspiration in living as a trans woman and (it rapidly becomes clear) desperately unrequited love, after she dies from some unspecified cause. Overcome with grief and desperate for any way to properly honour and remember her, the narrator sets upon the extremely strange cult tv show Vivian loved dearly and that the two of them spent so many hours and days watching and bonding over – and decides to create an encyclopedia of every character in it. The book itself is divided from A-Z, with each section including entries on characters from the (nonexistent) tv show Little Blue, trivia about the show as a whole, and related (if at times tenuously) context and anecdotes about Vivian, the narrator, and their history and friendship (as well as how the narrator’s life is going as she writes and grieves).
The book has an incredibly voice running through it. The narrator – she does have a name, but insomuch as anything in this counts as spoiler, it probably does? - is just an achingly specific person, just about the only kind of person who would actually create something like this for public consumption, and it comes through with every word choice. The style and prose itself isn’t really much to write home about, but it’s not really trying to be – it’s trying to read like a somewhat uncomfortably vulnerable and emotionally open personal essay (or one of the better edited class of long, confessional tumblr posts) published in the later 2010s. This it achieves perfectly – the narrator is a Canadian trans woman in either Toronto or Vancouver with a lot of nerdy and artistic interests, vaguely attached to the activist scene and pursuing a degree in journalism, and yeah basically every word choice and reference used fits her absolutely perfectly. The book does an excellent job communicating both what she’s trying to and the emotions and awkward baggage that piling up in the corner of her eye, too.
The book is, almost as much as grief or trans-ness, about art and your relationship to it – and the difference between that relationship and it’s meaning to you, and the thing as it actually exists. Little Blue – the show – is described at length and it sounds like, well, mostly like an overstuffed mess; like Twin Peaks but with most of the themes and narrative tension replaced by an endless series of tangents (even by comparison). From an interview with a minor actor included in the book, production seems to have been a mess full of divas, and the show was unceremoniously cancelled after one season, living on only through the efforts of a small but dedicated fan community enchanted by how densely it packs easter eggs and bits of trivia into every frame. But none of that really matters to our narrator – she loves the show, because watching it with Vivian and bonding with her over it was an (maybe the most) important part of how she bounded with her; the secondhand love and the way that re-watching and thinking about Little Blue lets her feel connected with Vivian brightens the experience of watching the show that it’s actual quality is almost besides the point.
Which works as far as it goes, but does leave the amount of wordcount spent on the actual ‘encyclopedia’ portions of the book and the anecdotes about the show feel a bit like empty calories. I kept waiting for all the trivia about the show to tie together into something coherent, or rhyme in some deep and profound way with the narrator or Vivian’s life story. Instead it was kind of just one damn thing after another. It honestly took me some time into the book to even realize it was supposed to be a live action drama – everything described seemed far more natural as a Steven Universe or Gravity Falls style wacky children’s cartoon (right down to the bits of trivia and hints of characterization hidden in seemingly every frame for obsessive fans), not an attempt at early 2000s prestige drama. Which, again, does all fit perfectly with the book’s themes – but it also makes spending so much of the book’s actual wordcount describing the show in such loving detail an...interesting choice.
Outside of the narrator and Vivian, the book’s characters are broad and thinly sketched out – but that’s quite alright, because Vivian is one of the most vividly and believably drawn characters I can recall ever reading. By the end of the book, she genuinely felt like a real living human I could have known, richly detailed and filled with the sort of vital, self-contradicting energy so few works of fiction really manage. (She also sounds like she would have been absolutely exhausting to be around for any length of time or keep up a friendship with, but in very similar ways to several real people I’ve known, so). The entire book really is a love letter to her, an admission love the narrator was never quite self-aware enough to realize she had while Vivian was still alive.
Which lends the book a bit of a tragic undertone, no matter how soft and affirming everything the narrator consciously writes is. She couldn’t realize she was desperately in love with Vivian, but over the course of the book it becomes pretty clear that she was literally the only one. Even beyond basic incompatibility (the narrator spends no small amount of time pondering how inexplicably and tragically straight Vivian was, and has one complaint or another I think every man she ever expressed any attraction to), over the course of the book it becomes increasingly obvious that Vivian was a far larger and more vital part of her life than she was of hers. It’s only after Vivian dies that she really comes to learn about whole swathes of her life – and even then, she nearly explicitly chooses to learn the details of and memorialize a somewhat airbrushed version of her.
All of which is intimately related to the fact that, despite pretty profound differences (in style, personality, sexuality), the narrator has very clearly put Vivian up on something of a pedestal as her inspiration and model for how joyful and fearless a life a trans woman can live – someone she desperately looks up to, even as she ruefully talks about not being nearly brave enough to live such a vulnerable life. Which is the same reason she provides no detail at all about how Vivian actually died except for specifying that it wasn’t suicide. (The whole book (not the book-as-fictional-object, the work of art by Plante) is deeply interested and invested in how trans women live and love and the multipage aside about suicide and why you shouldn’t do it was, if heavy-handed, also quite affecting).
Does the pitch of ‘a postmodern mediation on queer grief and book-length character study, structured around the framing device of a fan encyclopedia of a tv show that does not exist’ instantly make your eyes glaze over? Then don’t read this. But if it sounds intriguing, than on the whole I did find this really quite charming.
December 19, 2025
An elegy. A love letter. A reminiscence of the little pieces that make up a friendship. This book both warmed my heart & also broke it enough by the end that I cried.
September 2, 2020
This is a strange little novel about grief and obsession. It's the sort of book that will annoy some and inspire scholarship in others. Personally, I found it rather charming. The first thing to understand is: everything is meta. This is a book within a book about a fan of a fan. Got it? No? Okay, well, the novel is structured like an encyclopedia with each chapter an alphabetized entry with hand-drawn illustrations. And the entries, which begin as descriptions of absurd and whimsical characters on an imaginary television show, Little Blue, morph into vignettes about the narrator's dead friend, Vivian. This is a novel-as-wiki that is supposed to be an authority on and explain everything about both a cult television show and Vivian, a trans woman who was a devoted fan of the show. Except the authority of this faux reference book is undermined by how nonsensical the show was, and by what the narrator doesn't know or refuses to tell us about her friend (e.g., the details of her death, her troubled relationships, her life before transitioning). These omissions are deliberate and intended to provoke questions, such as, what do we need to know about people to love them. As readers, we do come to love the character of Vivian, a sexy, outgoing, complicated barista who is friend and mentor to the awkward, nerdy narrator. When the narrator tentatively tells Vivian she, too, may be trans, Vivian introduces her to trans life, 90's Brit pop, and the aforementioned television show. In this way, the book is a delightful celebration of fandom; the love that can bloom over shared fandom; and the ultimate fan letter by a trans woman to a trans woman (and, of course, to trans women everywhere).
July 30, 2021
I liked the framing narrative of Little Blue Encyclopedia and wish it were all that. Instead, half of it is a collection of completely useless tidbits about a fictional show. Most of these tidbits aren’t even really tied together in any substantial way that might let a reader piece together an inner story. This book also includes a bunch of pop culture references, half of which are also fake. It was confusing and disappointing to look up a mentioned art piece only to find it doesn’t exist. The reason I’m giving two stars instead of one is because the writing is pretty good, even though I wish the author focused more on one story instead of a story and a collection of ephemera.
One more superficial complaint: there was some strange and distracting kerning throughout.
One more superficial complaint: there was some strange and distracting kerning throughout.
October 5, 2021
Man, I hated reading this book! I really did.
I started off really liking this book. In the beginning section, we learn about the narrator's relationship with Vivian, and how she is writing this book as a way to grieve. I thought I would really enjoy this book; as a lesbian, I love reading about queer yearning and adoration of women.
However, my opinion of the book slowly changed, probably when I got to 40% of the book. I had been highlighting and paying close attention to the character names and the details of their storylines, when I realized that none of the information was cumulative or important at all. Nothing I read about the Little Blue characters in A gave me any important information in understanding what was told in F. I realized that 60% of the book was about this random TV show and all of its idiosyncracies. I wanted the details about the show to give me something -- relationship to other details from the show, relationship with the Vivian grieving timeline. But the links were literally not there. There is no cohesion in the Little Blue world, which made it agonizing to read. I didn't know why I was reading it. It was really shitty world building, and something that was mentioned in discussion for the class this book was assigned for was "I bet you that the people who read this book couldn't tell you 90% of the information about the show, because there was no reason to remember any of it."
And so then we get to the Vivian grieving timeline, right? I actually thought that this was relatively good and well-written. As a woman who has been in love with her best friend (two times, actually), a lot of Zelda's pain resonated with me:
Okay, so I finished the book, and figured -- you know, I hated the structure of that, I have no idea why I was assigned to read that. BUT, but -- I was like, whatever. The narrator didn't write this book for my enjoyment. She wrote it to grieve.
AND THEN, I FIND OUT THE NEXT DAY IN LECTURE THAT IT'S ENTIRELY MADE UP!!! IT'S COMPLETELY FICTIONAL!!!
Okay, so, what the fuck?! Hazel Jane Plante created a fictional TV show in order to showcase fictional grief about a fictional person? It works so poorly as a concept (like, there are so many other impactful ways to depict trans friendships and life and grief) that I figured that it was genuinely a real person writing to process her trauma of losing her best friend. Like, it was okay that it didn't work because it wasn't supposed to. But now, all of a sudden, I'm being told that it was a statement on how fandoms and queer trans friendships work. NO! IT DOESN'T WORK! I HATED IT!!!!
The only reason I'm giving this two stars instead of one is because I think the parts that aren't about the show are good, specifically the parts I quoted. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. I am so sad that I had to spend $10 on it because I couldn't find a free PDF online.
I started off really liking this book. In the beginning section, we learn about the narrator's relationship with Vivian, and how she is writing this book as a way to grieve. I thought I would really enjoy this book; as a lesbian, I love reading about queer yearning and adoration of women.
However, my opinion of the book slowly changed, probably when I got to 40% of the book. I had been highlighting and paying close attention to the character names and the details of their storylines, when I realized that none of the information was cumulative or important at all. Nothing I read about the Little Blue characters in A gave me any important information in understanding what was told in F. I realized that 60% of the book was about this random TV show and all of its idiosyncracies. I wanted the details about the show to give me something -- relationship to other details from the show, relationship with the Vivian grieving timeline. But the links were literally not there. There is no cohesion in the Little Blue world, which made it agonizing to read. I didn't know why I was reading it. It was really shitty world building, and something that was mentioned in discussion for the class this book was assigned for was "I bet you that the people who read this book couldn't tell you 90% of the information about the show, because there was no reason to remember any of it."
And so then we get to the Vivian grieving timeline, right? I actually thought that this was relatively good and well-written. As a woman who has been in love with her best friend (two times, actually), a lot of Zelda's pain resonated with me:
"If you love someone, you expose yourself
Your tender spots
You have to
You want to
You might regret it
But you dive in
DON’T YOU?"
"A few days before releasing his first major label album, Frank Ocean astonished everyone by publishing an open-hearted letter online that revealed his first love was another man. His love was unrequited, but Frank said he stayed friends with his first love because he couldn’t imagine a life without him. Then he writes, 'I don’t have any secrets I need kept anymore.' He says he’s grateful to his first love for what they had, even though it wasn’t what he imagined and wasn’t enough. Still, he’s thankful."
"It would be lovely if relationships were immune to power dynamics, but they aren’t."
Okay, so I finished the book, and figured -- you know, I hated the structure of that, I have no idea why I was assigned to read that. BUT, but -- I was like, whatever. The narrator didn't write this book for my enjoyment. She wrote it to grieve.
AND THEN, I FIND OUT THE NEXT DAY IN LECTURE THAT IT'S ENTIRELY MADE UP!!! IT'S COMPLETELY FICTIONAL!!!
Okay, so, what the fuck?! Hazel Jane Plante created a fictional TV show in order to showcase fictional grief about a fictional person? It works so poorly as a concept (like, there are so many other impactful ways to depict trans friendships and life and grief) that I figured that it was genuinely a real person writing to process her trauma of losing her best friend. Like, it was okay that it didn't work because it wasn't supposed to. But now, all of a sudden, I'm being told that it was a statement on how fandoms and queer trans friendships work. NO! IT DOESN'T WORK! I HATED IT!!!!
The only reason I'm giving this two stars instead of one is because I think the parts that aren't about the show are good, specifically the parts I quoted. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. I am so sad that I had to spend $10 on it because I couldn't find a free PDF online.
December 30, 2019
It’s fitting that the last book I finish in 2019 is one about death and grief, but also about friendship and survival. Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) is a mournful-yet-charming debut novel from Hazel Jane Plante. It is very sweet and tender, and also extremely weird. Written as a draft of an encyclopedia about the fictional TV series Little Blue, the novel functions as a love letter written from a lesbian trans woman to her recently deceased best friend, Vivian. I found its uber-meta-ness to be a bit off-putting at first but ultimately came to love how the experimental form functioned as a meditation on using pop culture to cope with grief. Definitely had a big cry on the last page with the line, “The joy of having known you is starting to paint over the pain of having lost you. And when I miss you most, I can absorb myself in something you adored.”
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE: Queer/trans fiction, experimental/meta prose, cult TV shows with dense mythologies like Lost/Twin Peaks, Britpop (Suede, especially), Universal Harvester by John Darnielle, The End By Anna by A. Light Zachary, several mentions of fictional characters doing karaoke and making zines.
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE: Queer/trans fiction, experimental/meta prose, cult TV shows with dense mythologies like Lost/Twin Peaks, Britpop (Suede, especially), Universal Harvester by John Darnielle, The End By Anna by A. Light Zachary, several mentions of fictional characters doing karaoke and making zines.
December 15, 2025
A story of the friendship between two trans women, told through encyclopedia entries about an obscure, quirky (and fictional) Canadian TV show called Little Blue. Vivian has recently died, and her unnamed friend is processing her grief by writing about her favorite show. "Like the series itself, she was enigmatic, flawed, and well loved." Each entry is ostensibly about a character in Little Blue, but is mostly the narrator's memories of Vivian. It also gradually becomes clear that the narrator is newly transitioned and is processing that as well.
The book is elegiac but not sad, thanks to Vivian's ebullient personality and the quirks of the residents on Little Blue Island - which reminds me of an American soap opera satire from the 1970's, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Worth looking up if you don't know it!
The book is elegiac but not sad, thanks to Vivian's ebullient personality and the quirks of the residents on Little Blue Island - which reminds me of an American soap opera satire from the 1970's, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Worth looking up if you don't know it!
February 27, 2023
An imaginative and experimental work that's also fun and easy to read! Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) describes the world of Little Blue, a cult TV show that never actually existed. Little Blue was Vivian's favourite TV show: after Vivian's death her best friend lovingly studies this TV show, writing an encyclopedia of characters and important moment. These entries are intercut with explorations of Vivian: of what the show meant to her, and what it was like to be her best friend. The compiler of the encyclopedia gradually realises she was in love with Vivian as she writes, and begins to see Vivian's flaws, as well as the aspects of her that she adored. This book is loving depiction of trans culture, of friendship, and of the ways music and TV can help us through our darkest moments. It's clever, witty, and full of emotion.
Read
June 9, 2024this was so good- to be able to describe a fictional tv show in such vivid detail AND mirror it with the grief of losing a friend AND to make it a loving tribute... so many beautiful, intricate moments. it takes a bit to get into, especially because this fictional show has so many moving parts. i often forgot characters and moments but because the book is structured like a dictionary, it was easy to reread and catch myself up. the ending was everything to me.
i picked this up because: booksandlala of course <3
i picked this up because: booksandlala of course <3
March 14, 2024
What a relief to read a tender, creative, well-executed vision <3
March 13, 2022
This was such a unique approach to expressing grief in the form of an encyclopedia dedicated to a friend who passed. This encyclopedia is about a quirky, relatively unknown (fictional) television show that the aforementioned friend, Viv, absolutely adored. It’s an elegy of sorts, with the protagonist, Zelda, discussing various characters from the show but also weaving in her own stories.
It’s heartbreaking to lose a friend, and Zelda doesn’t hide this grief at all. However, she also shares so many moments of joy and tenderness that really uplifted the importance of trans people—especially trans women—just living, loving, being themselves, and embracing each other and themselves.
What I loved that this book shared was an expression of queer love in all its complexities. Zelda’s love was an unrequited one, but I also think it’s so important to highlight the love that comes with friendship as well, which she absolutely had. Furthermore, this book jumps in and out of fiction to draw attention to the preciousness of trans lives that I found utterly beautiful. Plante crafted something so real and breathtaking in all the details and emotions put in such a short book.
As heartbreaking as this book was, I truly appreciated how she found a way to celebrate trans women’s lives. I want nothing more than this world to treasure them and see what joy they bring, which was so wonderfully highlighted in this book.
It’s heartbreaking to lose a friend, and Zelda doesn’t hide this grief at all. However, she also shares so many moments of joy and tenderness that really uplifted the importance of trans people—especially trans women—just living, loving, being themselves, and embracing each other and themselves.
What I loved that this book shared was an expression of queer love in all its complexities. Zelda’s love was an unrequited one, but I also think it’s so important to highlight the love that comes with friendship as well, which she absolutely had. Furthermore, this book jumps in and out of fiction to draw attention to the preciousness of trans lives that I found utterly beautiful. Plante crafted something so real and breathtaking in all the details and emotions put in such a short book.
As heartbreaking as this book was, I truly appreciated how she found a way to celebrate trans women’s lives. I want nothing more than this world to treasure them and see what joy they bring, which was so wonderfully highlighted in this book.
October 8, 2021
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . OK this book. OK.
This book is about a TV show. The TV show is not real. This book feels like maybe it could have been really good to write? Like, satisfying.
Like you creep into your little writer's shed and maybe get kind of high and all over the walls are ephemera you've been collecting for years and you kind of Usual Suspects this safe nook built around and out of your own heart into a world that can be . . . summed up. Alphabetized. Like maybe this book helped you be in a world at a time when the world itself had dramatically made one of the kind of terrible moves it makes sometimes where suddenly a person finds herself abandoned, terrified, undefined, less a body than a coagulate of mourning, smeared from the glass, the window shattered, a cold wind curling its twigs through your stiff little itchy, tender stitches.
This book feels like it is about a real love and real heart that aches for beating, a heart dogtired.
I loved it, it is unusually beautiful as well as beautifully unusual, arch and loopy and cluttered and pining and sad sad sad, sweet sweet sweet, the way all true love is is is.
This book is about a TV show. The TV show is not real. This book feels like maybe it could have been really good to write? Like, satisfying.
Like you creep into your little writer's shed and maybe get kind of high and all over the walls are ephemera you've been collecting for years and you kind of Usual Suspects this safe nook built around and out of your own heart into a world that can be . . . summed up. Alphabetized. Like maybe this book helped you be in a world at a time when the world itself had dramatically made one of the kind of terrible moves it makes sometimes where suddenly a person finds herself abandoned, terrified, undefined, less a body than a coagulate of mourning, smeared from the glass, the window shattered, a cold wind curling its twigs through your stiff little itchy, tender stitches.
This book feels like it is about a real love and real heart that aches for beating, a heart dogtired.
I loved it, it is unusually beautiful as well as beautifully unusual, arch and loopy and cluttered and pining and sad sad sad, sweet sweet sweet, the way all true love is is is.
March 7, 2021
I have been unknowingly craving this book for years. Reading it felt like salve for the queer loss of Big Loves/friendships/kinships/family. Magical and mournful!
December 16, 2022
Odd, sad, very queer
I’m grateful to have found this
I’m grateful to have found this
April 7, 2023
Beautiful and quirky and wonderful. A true gem of a debut.
May 18, 2024
This book is so beautiful!! I really don't know how to describe it, but it's just those that make your heart feel really warm and good!!! This is such a story of love, at its center, and it's a story of grief, and it's love told through the things you shared with someone!!!
The format of the book is really interesting, it's truly told as an encyclopedia, each chapter has a letter with a beautiful illustration - and I also love the detail that in-story you find, maybe a third in, the origin of these drawings - and it tells you of something (most times, of someone) from the world of the Little Blue show, which reminds me of a mix of Twin Peaks and Gilmore Girls, and how that brings something out in our main character's or Vivian's life and past!!!
This is just a beautiful book of memories and stories of a life together, of how you can love someone and that person can help you find yourself, and even more about community and friendship that comes with queer and trans realities, and that opposition you feel from society. And then in all of this, it's also about grief, and that living without the person you loved, and trying to hold on and honor the memories you had.
This was just beautiful, the writing was also really good - I found myself underlining a few sentences here and there - and I think this is something I would definitely want to reread in the future!! This was a perfect read and definitely recommending it to all!!!
The format of the book is really interesting, it's truly told as an encyclopedia, each chapter has a letter with a beautiful illustration - and I also love the detail that in-story you find, maybe a third in, the origin of these drawings - and it tells you of something (most times, of someone) from the world of the Little Blue show, which reminds me of a mix of Twin Peaks and Gilmore Girls, and how that brings something out in our main character's or Vivian's life and past!!!
This is just a beautiful book of memories and stories of a life together, of how you can love someone and that person can help you find yourself, and even more about community and friendship that comes with queer and trans realities, and that opposition you feel from society. And then in all of this, it's also about grief, and that living without the person you loved, and trying to hold on and honor the memories you had.
This was just beautiful, the writing was also really good - I found myself underlining a few sentences here and there - and I think this is something I would definitely want to reread in the future!! This was a perfect read and definitely recommending it to all!!!
April 3, 2024
I wish this was a bigger book in that I wish more people could read it. But I also think it's very fitting that it's a bit of a niche thing. It's like the show Little Blue in that way, which has a small but dedicated following. Friendship and fan culture are portrayed so well - in the way the characters quote the show constantly, getting pulled into this really weird thing because your friend likes it, dressing up and analyzing it together. At the heart of the book is a beautiful, complicated and messy friendship between two transwomen and by the end I felt like I knew Viv and that I'd watched Little Blue. The undercurrent of the whole novel and TV-show are grief, with every character in the show missing someone and every real character missing Viv or missing our protagonist in a way who is withdrawing into herself and the project.
If you like a bit of metafiction with a whole lot of heart and a quirky fun premise you'll really enjoy this one. It's really something else.
If you like a bit of metafiction with a whole lot of heart and a quirky fun premise you'll really enjoy this one. It's really something else.
December 22, 2022
eu tinha tanta expectativa pra esse livro e ele foi tão agressivamente mediano. a premissa é incrível, a execução é absurdamente sem graça.
é um compilado de passagens sobre personagens de uma série fictícia que não importam pra nada, quase não se conectam e não tem nada a ver com a história contada.
a escrita é super básica e não tem profundidade emocional alguma, mesmo sendo um livro sobre luto. não me conectei nem um pouco com nenhum personagem. tudo sem graça.
é um compilado de passagens sobre personagens de uma série fictícia que não importam pra nada, quase não se conectam e não tem nada a ver com a história contada.
a escrita é super básica e não tem profundidade emocional alguma, mesmo sendo um livro sobre luto. não me conectei nem um pouco com nenhum personagem. tudo sem graça.
April 14, 2021
I wrote an in-depth review of this novel in my newsletter: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/p/...
Loved, loved, loved every moment of this. So much humor and heart. So poignant and also so messy. It's a book about grief but mostly it's a book about life. It's an ode to trans friendship. The voice is just so sure, so beautifully rendered. It's not that often that I feel so swiftly and completely pulled into the world of a book, but this book is just so...sure of itself. A few pages in and I felt like I'd known the narrator a long time already.
The book is structured as a fictional encyclopedia, explaining the various characters in a fictional TV show that the narrator and her friend Viv, who has just died, loved. The world of the TV show is oddly fascinating, but what's even more incredible is how complete it feels. I have no idea how Plante pulls this off, but it does not feel like you are reading about a fictional TV show. Also, for a book structured around a fictional TV show, this is one of the most realistic novels I have read in ages. Every piece of it was just so absolutely authentic and real. Every character felt like a person I might know, even the minor ones. It's remarkable storytelling.
I also really really loved how deeply celebratory this book is. The narrator is a trans woman who is basically writing an elegy to her trans friend who has died. She's trying to go on existing each day with her grief, and so she starts writing. But this book isn't actually that sad. I mean, the grief is palpable and vivid and ever-present. So of course it's sad. But it's not tragic. Viv is not tragic. Her life is not tragic. It's so beautifully refreshing to read a book like this, one that lets all the messy truths and hard realities and beautiful parts of queer and trans lives just be there, on the page.
I loved every moment of this novel, I read it one sitting and when I finished it I felt like I could have turned back to the beginning and started again.I can't recommend it enough.
Loved, loved, loved every moment of this. So much humor and heart. So poignant and also so messy. It's a book about grief but mostly it's a book about life. It's an ode to trans friendship. The voice is just so sure, so beautifully rendered. It's not that often that I feel so swiftly and completely pulled into the world of a book, but this book is just so...sure of itself. A few pages in and I felt like I'd known the narrator a long time already.
The book is structured as a fictional encyclopedia, explaining the various characters in a fictional TV show that the narrator and her friend Viv, who has just died, loved. The world of the TV show is oddly fascinating, but what's even more incredible is how complete it feels. I have no idea how Plante pulls this off, but it does not feel like you are reading about a fictional TV show. Also, for a book structured around a fictional TV show, this is one of the most realistic novels I have read in ages. Every piece of it was just so absolutely authentic and real. Every character felt like a person I might know, even the minor ones. It's remarkable storytelling.
I also really really loved how deeply celebratory this book is. The narrator is a trans woman who is basically writing an elegy to her trans friend who has died. She's trying to go on existing each day with her grief, and so she starts writing. But this book isn't actually that sad. I mean, the grief is palpable and vivid and ever-present. So of course it's sad. But it's not tragic. Viv is not tragic. Her life is not tragic. It's so beautifully refreshing to read a book like this, one that lets all the messy truths and hard realities and beautiful parts of queer and trans lives just be there, on the page.
I loved every moment of this novel, I read it one sitting and when I finished it I felt like I could have turned back to the beginning and started again.I can't recommend it enough.
January 31, 2021
I have struggled to convince several friends to read Little Blue Encyclopedia. Let's get this out of the way: Little Blue Encyclopedia could be described as queer, experimental, Canadian fiction. For some readers, this may appear to be a bridge too far, but it shouldn't. Hazel Jane Plante's debut is eminently readable and the experimental part - the story is told through a mix of traditional narrative and encyclopedia entries - is hugely successful.
Little Blue Encyclopedia is a story about friendship and love and pop culture and grief. The narrator is introduced by her best friend (Vivian) to a cult classic TV show called Little Blue with a sprawling, unwieldy narrative and laundry list of characters. When Vivian passes away unexpectedly, our narrator sets out to write an encyclopedia documenting the show's complex tapestry as a tribute to her; the story is told through a mix of encyclopedia entries and traditional narrative. As you fall in love with the quirky, complex show being described, you also begin to understand the narrator's feelings for Vivian herself, a complex person who has been a sister, a mentor, a dear friend and an unrequited love to her.
The narrative is unabashedly queer and quirky as Vivian is, but it is welcoming and a joy to read, filled with layered humour. Another reviewer notes that it is "not as sad as it could be, considering it's about a dead trans woman" and I agree - the story is a celebration of Vivian's life more than it is a tragedy around her death.
Reading this was a joyous and surprising experience. Highly recommended.
Little Blue Encyclopedia is a story about friendship and love and pop culture and grief. The narrator is introduced by her best friend (Vivian) to a cult classic TV show called Little Blue with a sprawling, unwieldy narrative and laundry list of characters. When Vivian passes away unexpectedly, our narrator sets out to write an encyclopedia documenting the show's complex tapestry as a tribute to her; the story is told through a mix of encyclopedia entries and traditional narrative. As you fall in love with the quirky, complex show being described, you also begin to understand the narrator's feelings for Vivian herself, a complex person who has been a sister, a mentor, a dear friend and an unrequited love to her.
The narrative is unabashedly queer and quirky as Vivian is, but it is welcoming and a joy to read, filled with layered humour. Another reviewer notes that it is "not as sad as it could be, considering it's about a dead trans woman" and I agree - the story is a celebration of Vivian's life more than it is a tragedy around her death.
Reading this was a joyous and surprising experience. Highly recommended.
Read
February 14, 2020This book is very good! Unique concept. Perfect execution.
- demonstrates the power of rich world-building in a non-SF/F story
- explores the subtle relationship dynamics between a transbian and a straight trans woman
- each letter in the encyclopedia serves as a chapter
- accurate depiction of obsessive nerd/fan culture (fanzines, headcanons, etc)
- isn't as sad as it could have been, which is nice considering its about a dead trans woman
- only complaint is that I wish I could watch Little Blue but it's APPARENTLY FICTIONAL
What I find so powerful about this book (and most of the top tier novels by trans authors coming out) is that non-trans readers have SO MUCH to experience here. This book could have been about cis people and it would have the same potential energy. My cis friend was absolutely blown away by the depiction of fan obsessiveness depicted (she even made a Spotify playlist of all the songs mentioned in the book because she's the perfect music dork). I on the other hand merely enjoyed the book. I like it a lot! But, it didn't blow my hair back the same way because I'm not as big an obsessive nerd as she is (despite the fact I'm the tRaNsWoMaN of the friendship).
Point is, this book pulls off dynamic storytelling by offering several different avenues into its multi-faceted heart and that's just wonderful ain't it?
- demonstrates the power of rich world-building in a non-SF/F story
- explores the subtle relationship dynamics between a transbian and a straight trans woman
- each letter in the encyclopedia serves as a chapter
- accurate depiction of obsessive nerd/fan culture (fanzines, headcanons, etc)
- isn't as sad as it could have been, which is nice considering its about a dead trans woman
- only complaint is that I wish I could watch Little Blue but it's APPARENTLY FICTIONAL
What I find so powerful about this book (and most of the top tier novels by trans authors coming out) is that non-trans readers have SO MUCH to experience here. This book could have been about cis people and it would have the same potential energy. My cis friend was absolutely blown away by the depiction of fan obsessiveness depicted (she even made a Spotify playlist of all the songs mentioned in the book because she's the perfect music dork). I on the other hand merely enjoyed the book. I like it a lot! But, it didn't blow my hair back the same way because I'm not as big an obsessive nerd as she is (despite the fact I'm the tRaNsWoMaN of the friendship).
Point is, this book pulls off dynamic storytelling by offering several different avenues into its multi-faceted heart and that's just wonderful ain't it?
July 15, 2024
“The joy of having known you is starting to paint over the pain of having lost you. And when I miss you most, I can absorb myself in something you adored. Suede, Little Blue, a houndstooth trench coat. And, voila, to some small degree, there you are with me.”
An utterly creative mindfuck of a book about grief, mourning, trans friendships, and queer becoming. I’ve never seen someone who isn’t real so intimately revealed through an encyclopedia for a show that is just as imaginary. Little Blue truly took a sledgehammer to genre and is a work I’ll definitely be ruminating on and comparing most other books to for the next little while. An ode to what is revealed about someone through their small obsessions and the transparency of friendship, Plante’s work read like an alternative (or just unapologetically queer) version of Stay True by Hua Hsu; a book that interrogates the limits of authenticity in a way so creative it’s actually mind blowing. It’s absurd, surreal, and elegiac. An astounding alphabet of a relationship and an immensely creative form of storytelling I hope to emulate one day. I laughed, I cried, I cringed, and I hope to be remembered with the fondness of Vivian.
An utterly creative mindfuck of a book about grief, mourning, trans friendships, and queer becoming. I’ve never seen someone who isn’t real so intimately revealed through an encyclopedia for a show that is just as imaginary. Little Blue truly took a sledgehammer to genre and is a work I’ll definitely be ruminating on and comparing most other books to for the next little while. An ode to what is revealed about someone through their small obsessions and the transparency of friendship, Plante’s work read like an alternative (or just unapologetically queer) version of Stay True by Hua Hsu; a book that interrogates the limits of authenticity in a way so creative it’s actually mind blowing. It’s absurd, surreal, and elegiac. An astounding alphabet of a relationship and an immensely creative form of storytelling I hope to emulate one day. I laughed, I cried, I cringed, and I hope to be remembered with the fondness of Vivian.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 364 reviews