Anne FlemingReseñas

It's hard to express how much I appreciate this novel. It feels like one of those custom-made stories that I couldn't help but deeply love. There's also some literary merit though—so let's get into it.

The story of Curiosities is twofold: the story of documents and the story within documents. Framed by "Anne" (who we are to take as the titular author), who "discovers" three fragments of early 17th-century writers, we are taken on a journey spanning a plague, the high seas, and a witchcraft trial. Our players are Tom(asina)—a (tom)boy and sailor, Jane—his childhood friend and later lover, and Lady Margaret—a well-to-do scientist and creator of this small love triangle.

The story, as noted, is framed by the "documents" found by Anne. Each is given an introduction by the author, and each is copied for our reading "as-is." It took me far longer than I should admit to figure out that these major characters are made-up—and I hope I'm not ruining the fun for anyone by saying it here! I've worked in archives in some capacity since I was 19, spending the last year at the reference desk of an academic library. I'm pretty good at finding stuff, but even Fleming got the best of me at times. Various factual figures do make an appearance though, so watch out!

What follows then is a heartbreaking, harrowing, and deeply personal story of three individuals navigating their gender, sex, and desires amid a turbulent and unforgiving landscape. This is a historical world that is deeply foreign: people languish, people die, and fortunes turn ceaselessly at Fortuna's wheel. Just as all good historical fiction should accomplish, the small glimmers of joy sustain the usual bleakness and heartache of life. I don't cry reading, but I almost shed a tear or two. That's impressive.

What makes the conceit of veracity so tangible is the writing itself. Fleming has written her prose in an early-modern English style, with odd words, punctuation, and syntax to match. It reminded me at times of two of my other most favourite gay/transgender historical-fiction books: As Meat Loves Salt and Days Without End. Just as those two do, Curiosities utilizes the language of the period to make a startling unique contemporary piece that evokes the past in the clearest way possible. It is absolutely and utterly what I look for in historical fiction, moreso, I think than anything. Fleming isn't perfect though—I could tell a few pages in that it was not from a seventeenth-century hand—but I don't she was necessarily trying to fool anyone. It's subtle, but having read enough older texts, the weight of contemporary syntax, emotional consciousness, and punctuation is detectable.

Fleming has obviously drawn biographical styles from this period, emulating the sobriety of their words while softening them with her subtle contemporary flair. As I said, this is subtle: writing of the past is a tell, don't show affair. Writers of these centuries have an amazing command of language, with upstanding, ascension-prone prose that, to our ears, is quite stiff. Biographies, more than anything, were informed by classical rhetoric and meant to argue a solid point. Fleming turns it: with a more contemporary syntactical structure paired with an emphasis on the characters' internal emotions, the author has made it a modern story we can relate to. And man, can we relate to it!

My years in the archives have sent me through some particularly painful dead-end searches. I have utilized archives to understand difficult and sometimes contradictory aspects of my identities, and there really is nothing like "finding yourself" in the archive. Archival studies as an academic field is grappling with this new role too, in fact, and I can tell the author has had those same, omnipresent moments when we can see ourselves through the reflection of centuries past. I'm not trying to project, but as someone who lived two years as transgender man and left it to come back to "womanhood" still a bit confused, finding conceptions of masculine identities that validate the okayness you feel with your physical body is exceedingly hard to find. I've only ever felt normal when I see myself through crossdressing women in the past, and that, as a breed, is dying.

In all, Curiosities is a gem. I am so, so happy to have been gifted this as an ARC and to win a giveaway copy from Goodreads. I've been looking for that transgender historical-literary-fiction novel for half a decade now, and the existence of this tells me the next half-decade might treat us well. While I found some parts in the last third of the novel coming together a bit too cleanly for my taste, the amount of work I can tell went into it, and the sheer uniqueness of it, really trumps a lot of the criticisms. I also rate quite harshly, so a four-star is nothing to shake your head at.

Again, thank you NetGalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review 🙏½

Too bad she's Canadian; this could have been a Newbery.

What a fantastic, light, enjoyable read. New York and New Yorkers seen from a pair of misfit youths.

Loved it!

"Se non fossimo qui a guardarle, le stelle sarebbero ancora belle?"

When Toronto native Kid arrives in New York City with her parents to spend several months looking after a cousin’s dog, she expects to see new and unusual things, but the rumor of a goat living atop their building seems farfetched, even for Manhattan. But a goat is indeed there, and adult author Fleming uses humorous third-person narration to chronicle the animal’s circumstances and the story of how it arrived on the building, switching attention among multiple characters, both human and animal. Several of them have obstacles to overcome—including the goat’s hunger, Kid’s social phobia, her friend Will’s fear of windows, and an older neighbor’s frustration at the physical aftereffects of a stroke—which are dealt with as they search for the goat. Kid’s adjustment to New York City, her time in museums, and the warm and unusual neighbors make for a lively yet tender story. Will’s parents died during 9/11, a revelation handled with sensitivity, and the novel’s underlying theme of people coming together on a shared quest makes for a heartwarming and very New York tale. Ages 9–11. (Mar.)Publishers Weekly

What a fun, quirky, meaningful book! I loved the diverse characters, including the protagonist named "Kid" and a dog named "Cat." The goat of the title is a mystery that Kid is determined to solve along with her new friend, Will. Will helps Kid overcome her shyness and Kid helps Will with his own demons. Fleming reminds readers of 9-11 in a situation appropriate to the age group her book is intended for, with empathy and comfort. I particularly liked how the author treats adult and child characters equally with experiences and problems that matter, from pre-teens (Kid and Will) to 30-something's (Kid's Mom and Dad struggle with their jobs) to middle-aged (neighbor Kenneth's guilt over not doing more with his Dad) to elders (Doris and Jonathan coping with his stroke). Much thoughtfulness and realism in this 155-page novel.

Two kids with issues, one with social anxiety and one with an extremely overprotective grandmother, meet, become friends, resolve (mostly) issues. A goat on the roof is the catalyst for the story. A quirky read from many points of view. The multiple points of view is not seamless and that is the problem.½

Being a man of Leicester, I followed the news of the discovery of Richard III's body with extra interest and was particularly bemused by the ladies of the Richard III society, who exhibited all the hall marks of being in love with the former monarch. I suppose that five hundred years of death stunt the regal personage's ability to reject their advances..... I mention this fact because Anne Fleming appears to suffer a similar character flaw in Lord Byron's favour.

I do have sympathy with the general tenet of the book; whilst Byron was an unquestionable womaniser, his overall treatment of the human being was almost enlightened , for the period in which he lived. Anne Fleming, however, is not satisfied with this level of respect for his Lordship's personality: her argument seems to extend to such a pique, that were Byron to be compared to Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, or indeed, any other luminary, they would be found severely wanting in the process. This may be a ploy because, if Lord Byron is to be re-instated amongst the proud line of British greats, his reputation certainly needs all the help that it can get. It say a lot for the lack of poetry in the English bosom, that his oeuvre does not, of itself, excuse his defects after so many years so, "Go Anne!". Let us place Byron on a pedestal alongside Shakespeare, Milton and our other great men of letters.

Have I mentioned lately that I love Anne Fleming’s writing? (I would say I love her, but we’ve never met and are facebook friends, and that feels a bit awkward). Reading her recently released short story collection Gay Dwarves of America was a bittersweet experience for me, because I knew once I finished it, I wouldn’t have anything new to read by her until her next book came out. As in Fleming’s other work, Pool-Hopping and Other Stories (her first collection that was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction) and Anomaly (a critically acclaimed novel born out of one of the stories from Pool-Hopping), Gay Dwarves—I’ll get to this awesome title momentarily—peels away the layers of everyday people in everyday situations to reveal their surprising peculiarities. Or perhaps these peculiarities are not so shocking, considering what we all figure out when we get to know new folks: everyone’s pretty weird, right? Fleming shows us that, in fact, it’s our eccentricities, in all their diverse glory, which make us human; in fact, they’re what we all have in common...

See the rest of the review on my website: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/a-collection-at-once-...

Anne Fleming’s Anomaly (2005) is one of those novels, which, despite being nearly five hundred pages long, makes you want to return right to the first page and begin again once you’ve finished reading it. It’s the kind of book that leaves an empty spot somewhere inside your chest or stomach when you suddenly realize your sojourn in its world is done. Despite having spent so much time with them, I wasn’t ready to leave the characters, desperately thinking when I closed the book: ‘But, but, what happened to that character? What was this character’s reaction to her daughter’s revelation? Does this character change her mind about dating the other character? What does the future hold for them??” Like all great books, Anomaly leaves the reader wanting more...

See the rest of the review at my website: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/10/28/an-empty-ache-in-your...

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

It's been a while since we've heard from our friends at Pedlar Press, a small Canadian publisher dedicated to experimental yet mainstream-accessible work, and who are right now putting out some of the best designed mass-produced paperbacks in the entire Western indie world; but their latest recently showed up here not too long ago, Anne Fleming's story collection Gay Dwarves of America, and I have to admit that this may be one of the best ones they've put out yet. See, unlike most of the Pedlar titles I've reviewed here, Fleming's manuscript doesn't start out deeply experimental and then with crowdpleasing aspects added to it, but is instead a collection of mainstream stories about such banal subjects as suburban teenagers acting stupid while bored, then adds an engaging experimentalism to the dialogue, style and even plot turns, making this a highly entertaining yet dark-tinged and thought-provoking tome, the kind of extremely well-written human-interest fiction you might otherwise see at a place like McSweeney's. A bit too precious here and there, which is why it isn't getting a higher score (I could've done without the story containing just one word per page, for example), it's nonetheless a highly readable and satisfying collection from a press known precisely for such collections, and comes today with a big recommendation.

Out of 10: 9.0

Anne Fleming’s short story collection Pool-Hopping and Other Stories (1998), above all else, reminded me how much I love reading short stories. I’ve never really understood why so many readers who are keen to pick up novels are somehow reluctant to check out a book of short stories. Are people really so lazy they don’t want to take the trouble to reorient themselves a few more times throughout a book instead of just at the beginning? Fleming’s short stories are definitely worth the effort: I would count Pool-Hopping among some of the best short fiction I’ve ever read, up there with Ivan E. Coyote’s thousand-word one-time punches and Alice Munro’s strangely familiar tales.

See the rest of my review on my blog: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/the-extraordinary-in-...