Trans Fiction: Book Recommendations

Confessions of the Fox (2018)

Title: Confessions of the Fox
Author: Jordy Rosenberg
Date Published: June 2018
Publisher: One World

Commentary:
I just finished this book, four years after it was published. How did I not read this sooner??? This past year I have read SO MANY wonderful books with trans protagonists. I want to have a better pulse on what is out there. I guess that is the main reason why I'm posting this review book on Wattpad, in hope of finding connection and sharing my finds with all of you.

The premise of the book is that a trans professor, Dr. Voth, is perusing a university library book sale and stumbles upon a mis-categorized 19th century manuscript about the notorious London thief, Jack Sheppard. One of several revelations in this manuscript is the claim that Jack Sheppard was assigned female at birth. As Voth reads this manuscript he starts making footnotes. Some of the footnotes are academic, but many of them are personal tangents that tell us about his life. 

The structure of this story, and the voice-within-voice way that it is told, took me a minute to adjust to. Maybe that was because I listened to the audiobook and one voice actor reads both the "manuscript" and the footnotes/asides that are interjected into the historical narrative, and without visual cues this was at first disorienting. But once I got into this book, I couldn't get out of it. Now that I am done with the audiobook, I think I may buy a paperback copy of my own so I can go back and check out the footnotes.

This book is so much more than just a novel. Yes, the manuscript is fictitious and Dr. Voth is a character, but the history imbedded in the story is very much real. So is the historicity and the theory of archival limitations. The author, Jordy Rosenberg, is a professor of literature and queer studies, and his vast academic knowledge is imbedded in Voth's insights. 

If you have any curiosity about the history of trans identity, or the way that queer history has been suppressed and erased, this book offers an in-depth lesson on queer gender studies embedded within an engaging narrative. The way Rosenberg ties all the threads together into both a coherent story and a compelling argument for taking back our own history is artfully done and incredibly powerful. 

Plus there are some pretty sexy sex scenes. So, that's a bonus ;)

Synopsis (copied from Wikipedia):

The novel is structured as a story within a story. A 21st-century academic, Dr. Voth, discovers a manuscript that claims to be the confessions of Jack Sheppard. The manuscript reveals that Sheppard (like Voth) is a transgender man, and describes his experience of transitioning gender. It also reveals that Bess is of South Asian descent and that she grew up in the Fenns. The manuscript documents Sheppard's love affair with Bess, their criminal escapades, their memories of childhood, and their run-ins with authority. Voth's annotations to the manuscript begin as scholarly comments on its likely authenticity but soon become more personal, comically documenting his recent break-up and his difficulties at work. The novel offers satirical commentary on historical and contemporary political issues, including over-policing and surveillance, racism, the dredging of the Fenns, and managerialism  in 21st-century universities.