Passing Strange

Ellen Klages

Completed 3/27/2019, Reviewed 3/27/2019

5 stars

Last year, I read 94 books and gave out ten five-star ratings.  The last one was in September.  This year, it took 24 books and nearly three months before awarding another five stars.  I was so moved by this novella that I had to walk around the apartment to work off the emotions that had settled in my gut.  I loved this story about queer women in 1940 San Francisco.  It tells of lesbian love in a time rife with homophobia and racism.  And there’s a little magic thrown in the mix.  If the magic were more subtle, I would have called it Magical Realism, but really, it’s fantasy.  The book won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for positive LGBTQ content in speculative fiction, won the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards for Best Novella, and was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella and the Mythopoeic Award.

The story begins with Helen, an old lawyer with a terminal illness who possesses the last painting by the acclaimed artist Haskell.  She spends her last day selling the painting and divvying up the proceeds among friends and charities before taking pills to end her life.  This is not a spoiler; it’s the first chapter.  The book then goes back to 1940 where a circle of lesbian friends gathers for a dinner party.  There we meet Helen as a young woman, Franny, Babs, Haskell, and newcomer Emily.  The group regularly hangs out at Mona’s, a bar where women dress as men, and is frequented by the lesbian community as well as straight Midwest couples who come to gawk and be amazed at the drag kings show.  One night after the dinner party the group goes to Mona’s where Haskell is astounded to find that Emily is the star of the nightly show as her alter ego Spike.  Haskell and Emily fall in love and the two become a couple.  Of course, life for lesbians is not easy in 1940, even in San Francisco.  It’s even more complicated by the fact that Haskell is still married to a man.

As I mentioned above, this is a novella, under 220 pages.  Yet it finds a way to encompass a romance while presenting hard facts about homophobia and racism.  There’s a scene where Spike’s female piano player is roughed up and arrested by the police for wearing men’s clothing without wearing the required three articles of women’s clothing.  There’s also a scene in a Chinatown supper club that caters to whites where the host is chock full of racist jokes at the expense of the Asian performers.  Times were hard for people of color and for the queer community.  The author did a lot of research on old San Francisco and it’s evident in how she captured these issues in these scenes.

I can’t really discuss the magic in the story as it comes to play at the climax of the story and would be a spoiler.  And if there’s any criticism one could have for the book, it would be that the magic system is not fully elaborated upon, except for the fact that it’s old-country magic.  In that sense, it is a bit like Magical Realism, that is, magic in a real-world or mundane setting.  But I think Magical Realism often uses myth or allegory, and this book does not.  Still, it’s wonderful how it’s presented.

One of the best things about the book is how it portrays this group of friends.  It captures a common occurrence in the LGBTQ community, where friends become family when biological families reject them.  The whole middle part of the book is about Haskell and Emily, but we get enough of a sense of who the others are so that it is only natural that they all come together to help the lovers in their time of need.

My requirement for giving a five-star rating is that the book is excellent AND moves me emotionally in some profound way.  I didn’t cry at the end, but the book made my whole insides quiver.  The prose was elegant without being overbearing.  The dialogue was realistic and natural.  At the end, I wished I could have stayed with these women longer, gotten to know them all much more deeply.  But if it were longer, it may not have been the perfect little book that I won’t be able to stop gushing about for days.