Early Thirties as Rebirth: Review of Casey Plett’s A Dream of a Woman
Casey Plett, A Dream of a Woman.
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021. $21.95 CAD.
Order a copy from Arsenal Pulp Press.
If one of the hardest parts of getting older is having people disappoint you, an even harder part is knowing that you will eventually disappoint them too. This disappointment of not living up to the promise of what other people, or even you, think you are is at the core of Casey Plett’s latest book, A Dream of a Woman. Published by Arsenal Pulp Press, A Dream of a Woman is Plett’s third full-length book, and her second collection of short stories. While her first collection, 2014’s A Safe Girl To Love, explored trans women navigating mental health, relationships, and work, A Dream of a Woman takes these themes and matures them, breaking new ground and demonstrating impressive growth for the Lamba Award-winning author.
A Dream of a Woman begins like a conventional collection, with quick stories about individual characters. The first, “Hazel and Christopher,” follows a trans woman named Hazel reconnecting with Christopher, her best friend from childhood. In “Perfect Places,” a trans women named Nicole goes on a date with a cis man with a diaper fetish. However, Plett quickly blows up the expectation of the end of the story being the ending for that character by reintroducing Nicole in “Rose City, City of Roses.” Now, the reader sees Nicole at a later moment in time — May 2020, to be precise — writing a letter to a friend who has passed away. “Without anchors, grief dissolves in the brain like salt in water, invisible and unremovable, silent and interwoven,” she writes, capturing not only the grief of the global pandemic, but that of a former relationship and the absences she carries with her (156).
The standout stories of A Dream of a Woman are the two longest: the novellas “Obsolution” and “Enough Trouble,” which combined take up two-thirds of the collection alone. Structured as a repeating story that continues every second chapter, “Obsolution” is by far the most intriguing work, following the character of Vera over the course of a decade. The story isn’t a straightforward transition narrative, but rather a long exploration of Vera’s relationship with her on-again, off-again partner and friend, Iris, an abusive cis woman who Vera can’t quite keep out of her life. Much tighter in scope is the penultimate story “Enough Trouble,” which takes place over a single weekend and follows Gemma, a sex worker, returning to her small town of 8000 people to see her friend, Ava.
While Plett has long written about navigating a world where transmisogyny and poverty act as a cruel, visible hand, A Dream of a Woman explores what happens when trans women grow up and mature into their 30s. For many of Plett’s characters, much of their surviving and thriving now looks like settling down and living what would be considered a mundane life. As Plett writes about Tiana in “Couldn’t Hear You Talk Anymore,” “She tried to put together a nice adult life. Her hometown was cheap and she’d scored a manager retail job… For every night she went out searching for boys, there were four nights where she stayed home and read,” (96). For Vera at the end of “Obsolution,” thriving looks like reconnecting with her estranged mom, applying to nursing school and moving out of New York City with her sweetie, a surprising but ultimately satisfying end for both her and the reader. This idea is echoed by Hazel in “Hazel and Christopher,” when she asks “If your early thirties can be a rebirth, after rebirth had, supposedly, already been part of your life… then any period of your life can bring renewal. Can’t it?” (31).
A Dream of a Woman is also Plett’s most mature work for showing trans women in uncomfortable, grey areas morally and emotionally. For instance, in “Perfect Places,” Nicole decides to no longer see her date after she can’t handle his diaper fetish because it reminds her of all the men who rejected her because they saw her gender as a fetish, or felt uncomfortable by it. Likewise, in “Obsolution,” Vera is torn between staying with Iris, who despite accepting her transition, is manipulative and abusive. Still, the real showcase of this complexity occurs in “Hazel and Christopher” when Christopher comes out as a trans woman. Of the admission, Hazel is completely honest in her reaction, saying:
When you did tell me, I hated you instantly… You were vacating your guts and I was listening and nodding, but I could only think, I don’t want you to transition. I don’t want you to be a girl. You were the sweetest boy to me, and I loved you, and I still love you, but now I have to help you. I have to guide you through clothes and bras, and I have to watch your eyes grow heavy. To see you grow out your hair–oh God, you’re going to dye it, aren’t you? Of course you are. You’ll dye it something besides that pretty, pretty red. That pretty red hair (32-33).
None of the characters in A Dream of a Woman are perfect and the collection is all the better for it. Instead of a simple, reductive understanding of her protagonist’s feelings or actions, Plett writes with nuance and maturity, the kind that makes great character-driven fiction that a reader can sink their teeth — and hearts — into.
Alanna Why is a Montreal-based culture and fiction writer. She writes a biweekly newsletter about books and pop culture called Why’s World. Alanna is currently working on Bridge Burner, a novel about a one-hit-wonder from the ‘90s, and Amy of Suburbia, a novella about a 12-year-old obsessed with Green Day.