Pluralities is an allegorical story about the process of realizing that you don’t fit into the role you were assigned at birth. It’s a complicated and somewhat painful story about dealing with your own transformation while also dealing with the reactions of people who don’t understand why you think you are different/other than you appear to be. This book has a lot of “knives” (meaning, painful emotional moments) and was in a lot of ways extremely familiar. (There is a scene involving a cookout with unpleasant, bigoted relatives saying horrible, stupid things and having to endure the experience or find a way to escape it that was realistically unpleasant.)
There are two story lines. One follows a retail worker who
has psychic visions, one of which inspires them to quit their job. The retail worker is under a great deal of stress, and suffering what turns out to be dysphoria. (In this setting, women are marked with the word “She.” The retail worker feels disconnected and incapable of performing the roles associated with the gender they were assigned. This is symbolized by the “She stamp” being smeared and blurry.)
The other story follows a runaway prince who is unable to deal with the role he’s expected to follow. (Which seems to involve intimate relationships with people he doesn’t like who all want things from him that he’s not sure he can provide.) So he escapes with his sentient spaceship friend and gets himself immediately into trouble. (And also the sentient spaceship does something stupid, think its protecting the prince which leads to an entire Thing.)
Pluralities is written in a style that is clearly allegorical magical realism, but at the same time depicts the journey of discovery with painfully realistic accuracy. (Specifically, scenes where “She” is attempting to explain what’s going on with their mother, who immediately blows off their attempts to explain what’s going on. And also scenes where the prince is dealing–or failing to deal– with the emotional mess of his life, and his overprotective friend hiding information from him. Also, that cookout I mentioned.) In some ways I was reminded of Nancy Springer’s Larque on the Wing which also deals with questions of identity and being your authentic self.
This book was hard for me to read in a number of ways. I don’t do very well with stories that are clearly allegorical. I tend to prefer character driven or plot driven works with a lot of interesting worldbuilding. “She” and “The Prince” do a lot of struggling that is emotional to watch, but it’s difficult to understand and relate to them as characters–because they’re allegories of the experience of coming out as nonbinary in a society that is very invested in binary gender roles. Another reason it was hard to read: the sheer emotional accuracy of the feeling of confusion and frustrations as the people in your life refuse to listen to you. (This is not to say the entire book is a downer. There are knives, but there is also acceptance and friendship as the protagonists grow into themselves as individuals. I’m just resonating more with the knives than with the acceptance and found family aspects of the story.)
Pluralities is not the kind of book that can really be read for entertainment. (At least it’s a book I can’t read for entertainment’s sake.) This is instead a book meant to evoke and explain feelings related to transitioning, and why transitioning is emotionally important. It’s an allegory about learning how to be your authentic self, and the struggle to achieve that. I feel that it was effective in accomplishing that, and is well worth checking out.
This book review is based on a galley received from NetGalley.
Leave a comment