We all understand that “Best of 2014” book lists are a joke because no one has read them all. This is MY joke. I don’t read that much anymore, so I guess that just makes the joke funnier. As ever, I will come clean about any nepotism and intrigue that affected my choice. New feature for this year: I will crown one winner in each category, because that’s kind of fun.

 

Fiction (for grown-ups)

(The actual best novel of 2014 was DEVOTED LADIES by Lev Olsen, as yet unpublished so ineligible. Nepotism/intrigue level: This author is both richly deserving and my brother.)

 

The winner!: Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones.

 

In LGBTQ small press publishing, the author usually has to write her own back cover copy, as I know to my sorrow. You can be great at writing books but suck at writing back cover copy. But I haven’t really seen the reverse, so usually if I love the back cover copy of a small press queer book, I will love the book. That was the main reason I bought this book. Plus, frittering away my life watching Rose of Versailles has made me really enjoy stories about female swordfighters. This novel exponentially exceeded my modest expectations. It’s an incredibly compelling and well-written fantasy novel set in a mythical European country. I think this was some of the best worldbuilding I’ve ever encountered. It’s a world where there’s magic but, very realistically, exactly how the magic works is not that well understood and most people don’t really care because their minds are on other stuff. One of the book’s two heroines consults some ancient texts by an expert on the magic, and the information was so richly detailed and convincing that I actually wondered if this was a real historical figure. I thought this novel also dealt very nicely with some common problems in lesbian historical fiction (see, that’s what it read like, even though it was fantasy), such as having a realistic happy ending in a homophobic society, and also dealing with the lovers-pretending-to-be-mistress-and-servant trope. If you are looking for a lesbian Patrick O’Brian-esque fantasy novel, which I would have looked for had I ever dreamed such a thing was possible, this is it. Whatever Heather Rose Jones writes next, I want it.

 

Defenders by Will McIntosh.

 

No one element of this story is original—the earth is overrun by hostile aliens; humans invent a secret weapon to overthrow the aliens; will the secret weapon turn against the humans? But as a whole the story is incredibly original and exciting and thought-provoking.

 

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue.

 

A queer historical novel set in 1876 San Francisco about a burlesque dancer whose baby is taken from her and a woman who wears men’s clothes at a time when this was an arrestable offense. Then there’s a murder. This was a little quieter than some of Emma Donoghue’s other books and when I was done I was comparing it unfavorably in my head to my favorite of hers, Life Mask. But the story stuck with me and I keep thinking about it, so I’m realizing this book was actually pretty great.

 

What else was I reading?

 

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch. Fifth in a series about a London police detective who investigates magical crimes.

 

Revival by Stephen King. After a family tragedy, a small-town Christian preacher turns into a sinister miracle worker on a quest to see what’s on the other side of death. I really love Stephen King, but he’s written a squillion books, so some of them have to be better than others, and this is one of the lesser ones.

 

Non-Fiction

 

The winner!: Show Trans by Eliott DeLine

 

My fave book published in 2014 overall, no contest. I wrote a review here of this non-fiction novel about navigating the world as a transgender person with a rich inner life. There’s a lot going on in this book and I think you would like it, whoever you are.

 

Nepotism/intrigue Level: Extremely low. I know this writer a little bit, but I think this doesn’t count because I liked his books first and met him second because of that.

 

Gender Failure by Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon

 

Before I read this, I read another book each by Coyote and Spoon. Told from alternating POVS, Gender Failure is a a two-person memoir bout retiring from or messing with the gender binary. I really liked it and I would recommend it to to, oh, anyone. I actually did tell my girlfriend she should read it, and I have an iron-clad rule of never ever recommending books to her.

 

Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet by Jenifer Ringer.

 

Jenifer Ringer was one of my favorite dancers at NYCB until her recent retirement, so it’s no surprise that I loved her memoir. I thought it was also a powerful protrayal of having an eating disorder and recovery. And I liked reading about her partner James Fayette.

 

Bowie by Simon Critchley

 

I wrote a review here. I love David Bowie and books about David Bowie, especially if they talk about narrative identity and where creativity comes from.

 

A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernandez

 

A queer Cuban/Colombian memoir that delves into Santería, identity, sexuality, money, class, debt, language and intersectionality.

 

In My Skin: My Life On And Off the Basketball Court by Britney Griner

 

I don’t even really follow basketball, I just think Britney Griner is good looking and I like reading about basketball (more than I like watching it.) Written in a very conversational style, it’s an interesting story about coming out as gay while an elite athlete at a homophobic college. The only drawback to this book is that Griner is still very young, and so a lot of threads, like her relationship with her father, obviously seem unfinished.

 

Queerly Beloved: A Love Story Across Genders by Diane and Jacob Anderson-Minshall

 

A transgender transition memoir, but told in alternating chapters by both Jacob, a transgender man, and Diane, his wife of many years. Jacob had been a forest ranger and identified as a woman, but then after a career-ending accident began to identify as a man. Diane was very supportive and basically was one step ahead of Jacob the whole time. I enjoyed the dual point of view and the plain-spoken, straightforward style. Overall these were two very relatable people who described their experiences in a gripping way, which is not that surprising considering they were already professional writers (who co-write a series about a blind lesbian detective.) My favorite part of the book had almost nothing to do with gender or transition, though. It was about their quest to have kids and it involved clawing a used condom out of the garbage and then later being foster parents in a very strict program for kids who are juvenile sex offenders. There were things Jacob and Diane had never told each other until they wrote this book together, which made it exciting, but also sometimes repetitive.

 

Nepotism/intrigue: They have the same publisher as me but I don’t know them at all so there’s no story here.

 

What else?

 

Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag by A.K. Summers. A graphic memoir (i.e. it’s drawn, as in comics and graphic novels, but it’s a memoir. Not graphic as in “scary” or “lots of sex.”) Exactly what it says on the tin, about a pregnant butch lesbian. Cool art, with a bit of a Tintin theme. Keeping it real about having babies. But a smidge of the dark side you encounter from some people who say they are radical feminists.

 

Young Adult/Middle Grade

 

The winner! Legacy of the Claw (Animas #1) by C.R. Grey

 

Everyone has an Animas bond with an animal species... except for Bailey. How will he hide his affliction at his elite boarding school? And what is his involvement in a prophecy of revolution? This awesome steampunk-y middle grade story is told in a fresh and original way and its greatest strength is the luxuriant imagery and description.

 

Nepotism/intrigue: Ding ding ding, very high! This is my friend Cate’s first published novel! Way to go, Cate!

 

Just Girls by Rachel Gold

                      

I wrote a long review of this book. I used to be a really strong believer in Toni Morrison’s quotation, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” Then by coincidence in 2014, both Rachel Gold and I happened to write YA/New Adult novels with a transgender main character and a lesbian romance that is also about same-gender dating violence. You know, that tired old thing again. Now I’m a believer in a new quotation, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, sit back and put up your feet and eat some pistachio nuts and let Rachel Gold write it because she’ll do a better job.”

 

Nepotism/intrigue: I emailed with this writer once or something because it’s a small small world, but I do not think this tenuous relationship has influenced me.

 

Speaking of tired old things again! May I point out two other great YA novels of 2014 that sound from their (oversimplified) descriptions as though they are the same, but are actually wildly different?

 

Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis

Nolan has a seizure disorder, which causes him to be pulled into another world, where he lives life as Amara, a girl with an exciting and important destiny.

 

Nepotism/intrigue: I have followed this writer’s career with considerable interest since we were both in the Outer Alliance group (a SF/F writers group advocating for the inclusion of LGBT issues) and I was really pleased when she placed this book with a big house, but I don’t know her, so disappointingly once again there’s nothing to see here.

 

The Unintentional Time Traveler by Everett Maroon

Jack has a seizure disorder, which causes him to be pulled into another world, where he lives life as Jacqueline, a girl with an exciting and important destiny.

 

Pointe by Brandi Colbert

Theo is an talented African-American ballet dancer, but when her childhood best friend returns home after being kidnapped years ago, it brings bad memories back to the surface. Trigger warning for sexual abuse and an eating disorder.

 

Changers Book One: Drew by T Cooper and Allison Glock

Ethan discovers he is part of an ancient race of humans called Changers, destined to switch bodies four times before discovering which is his true identity, and he becomes a short girl named Drew, but luckily Drew still knows how to play the drums

 

What else?

 

This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki

This is a graphic novel, I’m not sure it’s even YA. A quiet, gorgeously illustrated story of two friends during the summer when they’re on a knife’s edge between childhood and puberty.

 

Everything Leads To You by Nina LaCour

Short review here. A pleasing story of a talented girl who falls for a girl who turns out to be the grandchild of Hollywood royalty.

 

Guardian by Alex London

Last year I was raving about the first book in the series. I got halfway through this one but then put it down to turn my attention to the books of 1914. I’ve noticed that I often most enjoy the first book in a series that’s set in a horrible dystopia, and then in the second book where it turns out the rebels aren’t that great either I sort of lose interest, and then by the third book which is a total bloodbath I’m bored. I think this says more about me than about Alex London who is a stellar writer. I am going to finish this book, and for all I know, the third book is not going to be a total bloodbath after all. I even started writing a trilogy following this very formula and then lost interest in my own series after the first book.

Show Trans has been my favorite book of 2014 so far and there’s not too much time left for another book to come along and steal the prize. Show Trans is a memoir about: being transgender, Grindr hookups, losing time, being dissociative, a trip out West, unrequited everything, the search for intimacy, writing novels based on real people, casual sex work, STDs, transphobia from medical practitioners and the world at large, having a non-binary gender identity, sex addiction, and finding a partner. I really love recovery memoirs, but this was no typical recovery memoir. It was better.

 

In a lot of memoirs, when people think about their own story they frame it as a narrative identity where bad things happen and they persevere and it all makes sense. But real life doesn’t work in this orderly way as far as I know. I also think whenever people come to a new conclusion about their identity they want a narrative to go with it so they recast everything that ever happened to support their new identity. And everything is viewed through the prism of identity so a different set of things become important and unimportant. But DeLine does not play along with any of this. He presents life as it actually is, which is picaresque, nonsensical, and almost completely inside one’s own head. He takes on, or recognizes, a number of new identities in this book but he won’t recast the narrative. It’s just one damn thing after another, in the best possible way. So maybe that is one reason why this book is a non-fiction novel, not a memoir.

 

You know how they say a fox knows many things but a hedgehog knows one big thing? One big thing is boring. DeLine is a fox, not a hedgehog. I think this is my favorite quality of his writing. I believe anyone who likes literature that defies a few of the usual customs of writing to deliver a very real experience would love this book. I kept thinking, “In the future when the world is less transphobic, everyone will recognize Elliott DeLine as a really amazing writer.” And then, “No, wait, can’t we just cut to the chase and recognize this right now?”

 

In Show Trans, DeLine tells a very personal story including painful, intimate details and it feels raw and true. But he never goes a step too far and over-shares. That is a very delicate balance and I really admire the way he did this. There is a strong sense of personal dignity and integrity deeply woven into the fabric of this book. Why should he explain everything? If he really were the Show Trans of the title (like a show pony), he would display everything to gratify the audience’s prurient curiosity or to “educate” them. But that’s not what this is about. DeLine writes as if his audience is smart and can figure things out without him explaining every little thing, and I like that subtlety. This is also not an “emotion recollected in tranquility” kind of story. It’s more of a “This all happened recently; emotion recollected in more emotion” kind of story. This makes it more impressive to me that DeLine is able to sift through what needs to be told with such discriminating prudence.

 

The one thing I was worried about before starting the book was that there would be disturbing sex scenes, because I’m a fragile squeamish flower. But it was no problem at all; these scenes were distressing but not graphic, making it a powerful book with a low ick factor. I guess part of the reason is that if the narrator is totally dissociated and not really present then there’s nothing to describe, is there? But it wasn’t just that, it was mainly excellent writing and good judgment. On the other hand, the medical scenes were truly harrowing. I have an extremely low opinion of medical practitioners and I expect them to be transphobic and cis-normative (as well as everything else that is bad.) But the treatment that DeLine received was so appallingly criminal and medieval that it was shocking. This book is a damning indictment of the medical-industrial complex!

 

Book design: I don’t talk about that anymore, which is a shame because this book is very pretty and even has photos.

 

What other book does this remind me of?: They’re actually not that similar, but how about Gender Failure by Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon, another great non-binary transgender memoir of 2014?

 

Theme song: Trouble Loves Me by Morrissey

New features this year:

-a return to judging which are the “best” (why not? I’m no more unqualified than anyone else.)

-bonus features of Best of 1813 and Best of 2113.

-the author’s original title for their book, if I was able to discover it.

-I will disclose when my opinions are influenced by nepotism and intrigue, which is more than a real reviewer will do.

-as you can see, I'm using BookLikes now, and this will be a series of posts instead of one really long Facebook note.

 

Best of 2013: FICTION

 

Clearly I did not read very many novels for grown-ups that were published in 2013, but I did stumble across a few things that were extremely good.

 

The Top Two plus my handsome cat.

 

Top Five:

 

I Know Very Well How I Got My Name by Elliott DeLine

I could say that this was the best novel of 2013, but that would be a charming understatement. How about one of the best novels of any year? It’s about a kid growing up transgender, although there are many are other elements to the story. I wrote a full review here.

 

Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh (Author’s original title, and title of original short story in Asimov’s: “Bridesicle.”)

In a grim future, the dead can be cryogenically frozen and brought back to life—for a price, leading to an industry where dead women are revived for quick “dates” where they must convince their rich suitors to choose them for resurrection. This book made me think about questions like what is love and what is life and why we die and why we fear it, without ever swerving away from being a cracking good science fiction story. Also you don’t usually encounter well-written lesbian characters in science fiction by men, but here you do. And it had the coolest cover! There is a parchment wrapper that overlays the cover, acting sort of like a scrim on a stage—it's hard to explain, just look at these pictures.

 

 That's with the paper overlay on.

 

That's with the overlay off.

That is the overlay itself. The whole thing is a book design triumph!

 

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

A young woman who’s transgender is living in NYC in the recent past and working at the the Strand, but then her life becomes completely unglued and she goes on a journey. Loved it. I wrote a full review here.

 

News From Heaven: The Bakerton Stories by Jennifer Haigh

Haigh’s awesome novel Baker Towers was set in a poor mining town, and she returns to the same setting and some of the same characters with these stories. I’ve mostly thrown in the towel on contemporary literary fiction, but Haigh is a subtle and wonderful writer. The story that stuck in my head the most was about a Bakerton girl who goes to work in New York City as a maid to a wealthy Jewish family. I liked having read Baker Towers first, but I think these would stand alone.

 

Artificial Gods by Thomm Quackenbush

Full disclosure: I know this writer slightly. A college student in downstate New York encounters some strange phenomena that she can’t explain—could there be aliens among us? Full review here.

 

What Else?

 

Dr. Sleep by Stephen King

It’s a sequel to The Shining, all about Danny when he is all grown-up and an alcoholic himself! The first couple chapters were kind of gross and then after that it was strangely non-scary with somewhat unthreatening villains/monsters, which suited me fine. It’s basically an unrelated story with some Shining-connected material thrown over it, also okay by me. My favorite part by far was seeing the characters who were in AA changing their lives aided by the fellowship of other alcoholics. There was an incident that Danny was haunted by and felt guilty about, and I kept thinking that he was overreacting and every addict has a story like that or far worse. Then this issue was beautifully addressed in the very end. Look, this novel is not as good as The Shining, and how could it be, but I quite enjoyed reading it.

 

Murphy’s Law by Yolanda Wallace

I love reading about mountain climbing, and this lesbian romance is set on a mountain climbing expedition in the Himalayas, so it was perfect for me. I expected headstrong climbers, terrible weather, low oxygen, life-and-death situations, and lots of smoldering glances. I was not disappointed!

 

Hit Me by Lawrence Block

I’m a big fan of the Keller series, about a stamp-collecting hired killer, and this is the latest installment. They don’t call Block a Grand Master of Mystery for nothing!

 

The Arrivals by Melissa Marr

People from all time periods who may have died are mysteriously transported to a world full of magical hazards. Right after I read this book, I read an essay by Robert Silverberg in Asimov’s that was about translating Westerns into science fiction by just changing the names (like “horse” into “greeznak”) and whether true conceptual originality is even possible. Those concerns are all extremely relevant to this novel.

 

Next Up: 2013 YA

 

Loved this novella about a kid who is transgender. It begins when he’s a child but most of the book is focused on his early adolescence. The voice was really true and sweet. It was a little more complicated and messy than the “I knew since birth that I had been assigned to the wrong gender” stories that I seem to usually read.

This book was a prequel to another novel about this same character, Dean, which I also read and loved. I really liked reading this book second but I can’t quite articulate why, so I guess there’s no reason they couldn’t be read in chronological order with this book first. To me, this book seemed even more memoir-y than the other. It feels real real real. Be warned that bunch of incredibly sad and painful things happen in this book, so it’s a quite intense reading experience. But it left me with a hopeful feeling.

It was funny to read a novella about the Harry Potter-reading, Power Rangers-loving set, because when I was a teenager those were the kids I babysat. I felt like, how can people that young have grown up to write outstanding novels? How can someone who wanted to be the Red Power Ranger even be old enough to write a novel? It made me feel really over the hill and ready for the grave for a while, but then I got over it because I was distracted by reading this great story.

This book is specifically a transgender story, but there were a lot of elements that seemed—I don’t want to say universal because that whole concept is dumb in a variety of ways, but struck me as integral growing up things. Well, that sounds just as dumb; I guess I should just use “I statements” and say that a lot of different parts of the story hit home for me. Or let me put it like this: I Know Very Well How I Got My Name has the same kind of starry literary merit that gives people the impulse to say that The Diary of Anne Frank is universal when it so clearly is about being an outsider.

What other book is this one similar to? The only thing I can think of is The Sweet In-Between by Sheri Reynolds, only because they’re both about gender-non-conforming teens and depict sexual assault in the same kind of youthful voice that is matter-of-fact and not yet ready to acknowledge that is even what happened, which is extra realistic and heart-breaking. Oh, I should say that I Know Very Well How I Got My Name isn’t YA but I think teens would like reading it especially if they’re OK with things not being spelled out for them and not broken down into tiny bite-sized chunks and if they’re OK with some things being quite disturbing, which how could you not be used to that already if you’re a teen?

The boring part where I talk about book design/copyediting: I liked the cover a whole lot, and it looks good from far away. The interior was clean and nicely laid-out, with very few typos. I’m not a big fan of the whole thing where the cover image is repeated and lightened for the back cover, but whatevs. So, overall very cool, with my one complaint (of course! what, like I’m going to not have one? that’ll be the day) being: there is nothing written on the spine, so when you put it on the shelf you don’t know what book it is.

I loved this one! Six stars! This novel really spoke to my condition, so YMMV, but I will tell you why I liked it. I will let you live vicariously through my reading experience. As soon as I saw that Refuse was about a depressed young man who is transgender and obsessed with Morrissey, I knew that I had to read it. But terrific subject matter does not neccessarily make a terrific self-published novel, so I was also very apprehensive about this book. Clearly before I even cracked the cover I had already endured a veritable roller coaster of emotions. My girlfriend saw the book and commented, “Oh look, you bought another book you don’t even want to read.” I assured her this one was different. Then I read the first few pages and I was enchanted. These opening pages were about how when the main character was a child, he had a speech impediment and couldn’t pronounce his own original name; the best he could come up with was “Yahweh.” I didn’t have time to read the book right away, so I found myself actually looking forward to an upcoming grueling trip when I planned to read it. However, apparently I couldn’t wait that long because I ended up waking up at 5am and tearing through the whole thing.

It’s a very interior kind of story, very up in the characters’ heads, but a lot happens in Refuse. I found it to be very nuanced and multi-layered, but at the same time accessible and straightforward. I got a definite feeling of the writer spitting in the eye of convention, but this is not some experimental gibberish that is hard work to read. It flows and has a simple narrative even while it defies certain expectations of what’s supposed to happen in a novel and especially in a bildungsroman. This would make more sense if I gave an example, I guess. Okay, Refuse tosses aside the rules about “show don’t tell,” and it works. In an early scene, the main character—shy and melancholy Dean—discovers someone knocking on his door, an outgoing guitarist named Colin Mahr who is also transgender like Dean. They talk and are kind of testing each other out, and when Dean asks Colin to name a band that inspires him, Colin gives the answer he thinks will impress Dean, and it works. So I read that and I thought, oh, this is just like how Morrissey and Johnny Marr met, how fun. I figured that was just kind of an “easter egg,” and obviously that similarity won’t be referred to because that would lack subtlety. But then the narrator, who is Dean but in the first person in the present, explains it to you about ten pages later. And somehow that makes it even better. It sort of reminds me of the narrators of Victorian novels, who explain and even moralize at you; it’s the same kind of direct but not simple approach. Dean also tells us early on, “Close-read all you want, you philistines. Do a close-reading of this sentence. How did that go? I hate you.”

What else did I like about this book? It’s witty, made me smile. I loved the main character Dean; he’s such a delicate petal. I liked how he was from the provincial North like Morrissey but in this case the North is Syracuse. Dean has very poor theory of mind in terms of empathizing with other people and seeing that it might make them feel bad if he says incredibly harsh things to them. His own pain mostly blinds him to the less-rarified feelings of others. But the writer is deeply aware of Dean’s flaws and presents Dean’s at-times controversial viewpoints tenderly so that I always felt sympathetic to Dean instead of annoyed. Did I say “deeply aware”? This story is nothing but stratum after stratum of self-awareness.

One big thing that this book was about was self-loathing/internalized transphobia. The easy out would have been if Dean had some big revelation and decided to accept himself and then he became happy, but essentially that never happened. (That’s not a spoiler, is it? Is it?) I thought it was really brave and awesome to have a character mostly just go on hating himself and being miserable. But hard, it was hard to watch this lovable character suffer and not get to have a perfect ending all wrapped up with a bow. I’m only realizing now that I was sort of warned (in a Mill On The Floss “That girl will drown someday” kind of way) when Dean describes a book he read as a child where the dog hero dies at the end and how cruel that was. (I’m NOT saying anyone drowns or dies at the end of Refuse, only that it is artistically good but humanly cruel not to give your characters happiness, and I was duly warned.)

Anyway, all this self-loathing was very thought-provoking. It made me think about when I was a teenager and all the other girls were constantly whining about how they were fat, but I never did because I was a feminist and I thought it was all BS. But the result was, all the other girls got to have their friends coo over them and tell them that no they weren’t really fat, while I had the same horrible thoughts in my head that they did but because I never spoke them aloud I never got all the nice cooing and reassurance. So really I was punished for being too highly evolved. And it is nice to express self-hatred if that is what we unfortunately feel and read about self-hatred, even when we know better and we know that we are all wonderful. And in this world there truly are people whose lives don’t get better and they stay depressed always so it’s sort of affirming to see that in a book instead of having everything be all inspirational. Inconsolably sad people, your life is validated in this book! And it makes me think there is more to life than YA books because pretty much you CAN’T have a self-loathing person whose life doesn’t get that much better in a YA novel. And in all my other reviews of books with transgender characters I always say that no one should come away from such a book feeling alienated or worse about themselves, which I imagine could potentially happen with this book although it didn’t to me. But those other books were all YA, and none of those rules apply here. So it makes me think I should widen my mind and read more contemporary literary fiction like this one instead of mostly YA, even though contemporary literary fiction is generally shitty and YA reliably rings all the cherries. BTW, because I heard about this book on Lee Wind’s I’m Here, I’m Queer, What The Hell Do I Read blog, I thought it might be YA because that’s what the blog is nominally about. So I was excited by the possibility that this book was the literary equivalent of a golden winged mer-unicorn, ie a YA novel with a transgender character or themes written by a person who is transgender. But, no.

I really liked all the Morrissey/The Smiths references and quotations (usually embedded into the dialogue or description so that I expect you won’t notice them if you don’t already know them.) I don’t think there’s any requirement to be a Morrissey fan to like this book, but it just makes it that much better. Probably even the Moz-haters will get a little frisson of “Hah, just as I always suspected, these fans are crazy freaks,” so really this book is for everyone. As it turned out, the day I read this novel was a not-great Morrissey news day, so I was glad to have bracing reading material.

While I was reading this book, I kept thinking about the Enneagram, which is a personality typing system with 9 types of personalities that is a constant topic of conversation in my house because my girlfriend is really big into it. You may say that the whole idea of labeling personalities is inherently dumb and of course there are more than nine kinds of people, and I can’t argue with you, but it can be a nice heuristic for viewing the world and understanding people who are different from yourself. Anyway, I just kept thinking “Dean is a Four! Dean is such a Four! Dean is a foury Four!” The Fours’ central wish is for someone to see them for who they really are, but they also don’t want you to look at them. They are all about identity, depth, and introspection, and they can get so wrapped up in their own emotions that they are basically living in a fantasy world and never actually do anything in the real world. They tend to be withdrawn, over-identified with their own feelings, and envious of others, and have a tough time just being themselves. But their saving grace is that they can be unspeakably creative, self-aware, emotionally authentic, sensitive, self-expressive and they find meaning everywhere. I think Dean is a Four with a Five wing, unlike Morrissey, the world’s Fouriest Four, who has a Three wing. Anyway, if you are interested in the Enneagram or enjoy reading about characters like that, this book will be like crack for you.

In conclusion, this book pleases me more than anything I’ve been reading lately (except my brother’s new novel but I am only up to chapter 9 in that.) I can’t stop thinking about Refuse. I also liked the cover. I think if I had seen the cover without any description of what the book was about, I would basically get the idea. I’m looking forward to re-reading it already. I feel a certain willingness to read any fiction this guy will ever write. This book has inspired me to the greatest heights of word count and incoherence ever in my Goodreads reviews. The only other book that this reminds me of a little is (You) Set Me on Fire by Mariko Tamaki. (Forget what I said about The Mill on the Floss, that was silly.) Oh yeah, did I mention that this novel has a love story in it? It looks like I didn’t describe the plot at all, which is the whole point of reviews. Oh well.

Were there things I didn’t like? But of course. The interior book design was atrocious; I did not like the way it was laid out at all, and the formatting was inconsistent and there were plenty of typos. This makes me sad. Does a pastry chef create an incredibly delicious dessert only to smush it all over the plate in a haphazard way? I also had a tiny credibility problem with the ending. Dean refuses something that I don’t think anyone could. (I’m not talking about the graveyard scene, I mean the conversation at the end.) Even if the offer made to Dean would lead to ruin and he knew it, I still don’t see how he could possibly say no.

When I tried to look this book up on Goodreads by title and author, and then by author, I came up with nothing. I finally had to enter the ISBN. It turns out the problem is that I cannot spell the name “Elliott” with the correct number of T’s. But if it’s true that there’s no great loss without some small gain, then now that Goodreads has been taken over by the evil empire Amazon, why can’t Goodreads have superior searchability like Amazon has? I should be allowed to be one letter off and still find the book. Speaking of Amazon, why don’t you buy this book directly from the author’s website so he gets all the money? http://elliottdeline.tumblr.com/Books
Unless you truly cannot afford the $2 price difference or whatever it is.