Some Strange Music Draws Me In: A Novel
-
-
5.0 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
One of Lit Hub’s 38 Favorite Books of 2024
One of Autostraddle's Best Books of 2024
From an award-winning author, this provocative novel tells an emotionally gripping story about friendship, family, and transgender awakening in a working-class American town.
It’s the summer of 1984 in Swaffham, Massachusetts, when Mel (short for Melanie) meets Sylvia, a tough-as-nails trans woman whose shameless swagger inspires Mel’s dawning self-awareness. But Sylvia’s presence sparks fury among her neighbors and throws Mel into conflict with her mother and best friend. Decades later, in 2019, Max (formerly Mel) is on probation from his teaching job for, ironically, defying speech codes around trans identity. Back in Swaffham, he must navigate life as part of a fractured family and face his own role in the disasters of the past.
Populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Some Strange Music Draws Me In is a propulsive page turner about multiple electrifying relationships—between a working-class mother and her queer child, between a trans man and his right-wing sister, and between a teenager and her troubled best friend. Griffin Hansbury, in elegant, arresting, and fearless prose, dares to explore taboos around gender and class as he offers a deeply moving portrait of friendship, family, and a girlhood lived sideways. A timely and captivating narrative of self-realization amid the everyday violence of small-town intolerance, Some Strange Music Draws Me In builds to an explosive conclusion, illuminating the unexpected ways that difference can provide a ticket to liberation.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Griffin Hansbury’s introspective novel reckons ferociously with the shifting meaning of trans identity in an ever-changing world. Hopping between two timelines, we follow Max as a misfit teen in the ’80s as he begins to realize he’s trans, while in the present day, he fights to keep his job as a teacher after discussing trans identity in the classroom. Hansbury paints an artful portrait of Max’s experiences, especially his young life in small-town Massachusetts. We were pulled right into his feeling of obsession when a mysterious and confident trans woman named Sylvia shows up in town. Hansbury’s nuanced writing strikes a great balance between the hardship of Max’s everyday experiences with transphobia and the levity of his don’t-give-a-damn attitude—a defense mechanism that often gives him the strength to cope. (And the novel’s affectionate, larger-than-life sense of ’80s nostalgia doesn’t hurt either). This is a spectacular read about queer identity and finding your place in the world.
