By Dylan Curran
“No she wasn’t any happier, no she didn’t feel any more like a real girl. But she was calmer now, like a small buzzing part of her brain had been turned off, and was now forever at rest.” So explains Wendy, our main character in Casey Plett’s Little Fish. Affectionately called “Wendy-burger” by her roommate, she is a fierce, compassionate, and genuine character that breathes life into the novel.
Little Fish is a humble and thought-provoking look at the trans community in Canada. It is no surprise that it has been decorated by so many awards (Amazon Canada First Novel Award, Lambda Literary Award, and Firecracker Award for Fiction, to name a few). As we follow Wendy throughout her stumbles and triumphs, we begin to unravel the intricacies of the system that has made it its mission to create barrier upon barrier for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
Although the book is set in Winnipeg (i.e., “Winterpeg”) we find ourselves making connections to other cities and small towns dotted around the country. From Mennonites to sex workers and everyone in between, we meet a plethora of rich characters, each with their own voice. We mourn with Wendy. We rage with her. We celebrate with her. And we definitely take another shot of vodka with her!
While there are sad moments throughout the novel, there are also eclipses of happiness—pure joy that leaves the reader with a genuine smile on their face. I couldn’t help but feel for characters like Lila; we ache with the same twinges of loss and despair. But it is Plett’s focus on relationships that guides us through our grief, with dialogue that lends itself well to the delicacy of the subject matter. We find ourselves yearning for those same moments of intimacy and friendships that occur in the novel.
I was touched by the careful tenderness exchanged between father and daughter. When Wendy visits Ben we immediately feel the wholesomeness of his unconditional love for his daughter— the easiness of it, the agility. By extension, you too feel loved. It is a stark difference between the narratives we are expected to believe about 2SLGBTQIA+ folks being ostracized from their loved ones. We need more books that detail these relationships, ones without the strife of coming out and being tossed away. Plett presents us with hope, futility, and love.
My favourite parts of this novel centre around Wendy’s inner dialogue. The honesty of her doubts and the way she deals with them forced me to take a look at my own life. How should I be examining this moment? What is this snippet of time contributing to the whole of my experience?
I want to leave you with a quote from the book that replayed in my mind long after I read the last page:
Here, here is my skin that feels like your skin, my muscles and frailties that feel like yours, the lift of your flesh something I intuitively know from my own body, inner maps that, for most of my life, I thought were purely shameful and mine alone. And here, with you, with me, for minutes, for hours, if nothing else—a line from a book Wendy couldn’t remember appeared to her in a slippery ripple of memory—If I loved you, this is how I would love.