Aira’s new novella possesses such exuberant and unpredictable energy that to offer a synopsis would be a disservice to those coming in blind to this tour-de-force of digressive narrative. The book uses the eponymous event not as a subject, but as the jumping-off point for multiple stories involving different characters, settings, events, and coincidences. Translated by the great Chris Andrews, this work supports Aira's place as one of the more unique and dynamic writers of his generation--one surely worthy of comparisons to Borges and Bolaño, but eminently deserving his own singular place in the pantheon of literary greats.
There is no hand-holding from Peters here as she takes us into the complex web that connects Reese, Ames, and Katrina as they navigate sexuality, gender, their own traumas, and parenthood in the twenty-first century. The plot centers around Ames, a detransitioned transgender woman, who comes to his ex-girlfriend Reese, a trans woman, with a proposal: to be a third parent to the child he and his boss Katrina are bringing into the world. As the story jumps back and forth through time, we are privy to how the characters grapple with their own identities and the complexity of existing as transgender women. Detransition, Baby is a sharp debut novel that is at once thought-provoking and tender, a grounded view of new understandings of family.
Rooney’s newest novel--a cause for celebration--may be her most personal and her most interrogatory yet. Featuring the intertwining relationships of four characters in varying degrees of intimacy as they navigate lives under constant threat of collapse, Rooney expands her literary frontiers by writing about familiar subjects: friendship, desire, youth, and a world in crisis. Few people can write about millennial existentialism and angst as well as Rooney, which has pigeonholed her as a millennial novelist--a misleadingly narrow descriptor, because her psychological acuity and insight rank her as one of the greats of any literary generation.
