Notes from a Regicide

Notes from a Regicide, by Isaac Felman

This is the kind of book that, were it written by a cis man about cis people, would be hailed in the New York Times Book Review as the novel of the century. It is profound, inexplicable, mesmerizing, a meditation on the human spirit and the ways we need each other--it's art. Fellman is one of the greats, and although I'm not holding my breath for the NYT BR to recognize him, I so wish *somebody* with a giant platform would. I suppose booktok reaches more readers than the NYT does, these days, so, crossing my fingers that it goes viral.

A lot of the focus of both the publisher promo and the reader reviews is on the transness of Notes from a Regicide, and it is really very trans. Thinking back, I'm honestly not sure how many cis people there even are in the book. Surely there must be a few? I guess the king who gets regicided is cis. But he's not really important, not the central figure in spite of his death's centrality to the plot, both because this isn't really a book about plot and also because his death isn't really about him at all.

This is one of the only books I've ever read where a majority of the characters are trans. Some of that is on me, I suppose. Books like this do exist, I just haven't read them. But I guess I didn't know what I was missing. The strange relief that comes from a story where everyone Gets It is so lovely. There's a trans nun who manufactures hormones! She's a side character but she's so wonderful. There's a trans surgeon who does top surgeries! I think about how the experience of getting surgery would have been different if he was my surgeon and I want to start a fund to put trans people through medical school.

I've seen less focus on the way everyone in this story is also disabled. Griffon, I suppose, is only disabled by childhood trauma, and not everyone with trauma thinks of themself as disabled by it, even when it damages their relationships and ability to connect with other people. But Zaffre and Etoine both are so damn human, Zaffre's schizophrenia and suicidality, Etoine's damaged feet, his alcoholism, the way both of them fail to cope with life... a marginalization like transness produces the conditions that create disability. This is something I have seen over and over in real life. It is, again, a strange relief to see it in fiction.

The way Fellman doesn't require his characters to be aspirational in their transness and disability, the way he loves them exactly as broken and limited and myopic as they are, is what makes this book feel so literary to me. A lot of lit fic tries to pull this off, to show characters relatable in their specificity and flaws. Here, Fellman not only writes shockingly human characters, he places them within a revolution as neurotic and haphazard as they are. It's a fantastic achievement.

I listened to this on audio. The narrator is excellent to the point I hope he wins awards. Do they have awards for audiobook narration? They should, it's as much an art as voice acting.

Pairs well with: "Queen" by Perfume Genius