A safe girl to love

Lambda winner Plett (Little Fish) made her debut with this impressive collection, which now returns to print. "Twenty Hot Tips to Shopping Success" is framed as a darkly satirical guide for a woman who's just transitioned. In "How Old Are You Anyway?" cam girl Lisa, 27, tries to avoid her ex's transphobic cousin and has a rough sexual encounter with a neighbor. In the excellent "Not Bleak," Carla and her boyfriend Liam's housemates suspect Zeke, a newly transitioning Mennonite woman, of stealing Carla's hormone treatments. Later, Carla agrees to pose as Zeke's girlfriend on a visit to her grandfather, where Zeke passes as a man in her traditional community. The episodic "Winning" follows Zoe, 24, back to her hometown of Eugene, Ore., where she hangs out with old friends, finds new crushes, has an uneasy sexual encounter with her boss (who doesn't know she's trans), and deals with her strained relationship with her mother, Sandy, who is also trans. Plett has a knack for cracking open her characters' messy, conflicted feelings with punchy lines, as in "A Carried Ocean Breeze," when the narrator reflects on her and her friends: "I don't want to be brave. I want us to be okay." These character studies are thoughtful and gorgeous. (Apr.)

A new edition of Plett's debut collection resurfaces 11 thoughtful stories exploring the lives of young trans women as they attempt to carve out space for themselves, set often in Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Sophie returns to Winnipeg to spend the holidays with family. Lizzy and Annie wake up in bed together and begin a new relationship. Zoe helps her mother pack up her childhood home in Eugene, Oregon. These snippets of everyday life include friends with blue hair and blue hoodies that make them look like "an angry drunken Skittle" or text messages from parents that read, "Your room is a shithole. I love you!" They also come with an ever present tension, a feeling that the other shoe could drop at any moment. Many of Plett's characters seem to sense this for themselves. In ways ranging from fun to awkward, from endearing to heartbreaking, they grapple with what it might mean for their physical or emotional safety. This subtle foreboding is particularly well served by the use of second-person narration, as deployed in stories like "How to Stay Friends." Here, the narrator walks you through a dinner between exes and outlines what "you" should do next. It's an exercise that becomes blisteringly painful when "you" recount the stalking and harassment you've experienced post-transition and then have to wait to see how your ex-girlfriend will respond. Will she commiserate? Attribute it to life as a woman? Offer advice about how to protect yourself? Blame it on your choices? It's one of many scenes that evoke the feeling of holding your breath and that seem to hang in the air for a long while after rather than fully or easily resolving. In these cases, the focus is less on what happens than on what could. A collection driven by deeply human, sometimes humorous, but always exquisitely rendered details. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.