Any other city A novel

Lambda winner Plante (Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian)) offers a vibrant if overstuffed chronicle of trans indie rocker Tracy St. Cyr, lead singer of fictional band Static Saints. The narrative takes the form of Tracy's published memoir, and the first part, set in 1999, covers her exploits in an unnamed Asian city with two older trans women while pining for her girlfriend back in the U.S. As she navigates her gender identity before transitioning, she is mentored by installation artist Sadie Tang. The second part takes place in 2019, when Tracy is again visiting the same city, this time writing music and reflecting on her creative output and her transition. The alleys and streets are haunted by her memories of her old friends, whom she's since lost touch with. Eventually, Tracy ends up at an exhibit of films by Sadie narrated by the Icelandic singer Björk that encapsulates her joy in being alive: "There was something very sensuous about how Björk said the word 'orgasm'.... She imbued the word with a sense of wonder." Though Plante loses momentum with overlong depictions of Tracy's songwriting sessions, she adeptly conjures the wild and wonderful days of a musician finding her voice. Despite the bumps, this has plenty of life. (Apr.)

Tracy St. Cyr is a 40-something semifamous rock musician whose memoir focuses on two distinct periods, 1993 and 2019, excavating the trauma of relationships and transitions--first girlfriend to worst girlfriend, aspiring artist to legit indie star, passive adolescent to riotous trans girl. Lead singer and guitarist of Static Saints, Tracy has divided her two personal epochs into Sides A and B, locating her firmly on a wry, lo-fi, then-and-now Gen X axis where reality can bite. Or as she says, "I felt like a hot aging punk dyke and realized that maybe I was a hot aging punk dyke." Side A has an un-deadnamed Tracy chronicling first love and loss with Astrid while living in an unnamed city, alone until falling in with a dazzling coven of trans artists. In Side B she's back in the same city, alone again and recovering from a devastating relationship with suicidal butch barkeep Johnny. And the transformations she once again finds here are restorative, generative, and very, very hot. As Tracy slips seamlessly into an eloquent and extremely explicit erogenous zone, Plante convincingly makes the case that there is in fact a difference between erotica and porn. The reader will also learn: how to eat an oyster, how to fist, how to muff. If only Plante had let Tracy keep exploring and explaining herself (on her "slutty" grad school years: "I drew the line at business and criminology students. I mean, we all need standards"). Instead, relentless inside-baseball musical references feel less like scene-setting and more like name-checking to establish music-geek bona fides. Mary Timony, Redd Kross, Langley Schools Music Project….Okaaay. Not least, it's difficult to imagine many readers having enough particular knowledge or patience to stick with it. Similarly, Tracy's protracted creative sessions can be pedantic at best, more likely just plain dull ("I put a capo on the second fret of my guitar and fumbled around with chords, finally locating a simple chord progression: Bm D A E"). And curiously, rather than just writing a first-person novel, Plante has inserted herself into the story as "co-author" of St. Cyr's memoirs. She hits the conceit hard in a giddy foreword but abandons it entirely until a second foreword, this time from Tracy opening the 2019 section. The premise, which adds exactly nothing, is one darling that should have been killed. Eye-glazing esoterica notwithstanding, this dreamy, erotic "memoir" is a smart, sexy affair. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.