I picked up GIRLFRIENDS in the front yard of someone’s house, out of their Little Library (in which I’ve also gotten an Alan Furst and a small book summarizing progressivism), without knowing what it would be about, but the painting on the cover - low lighting, a jumble of candles, books, various tools of beautifying, a stack of books, and the quarter of a woman’s body visible on the right-hand side — made me think it would be artsy, lyrical, and short, a lot like the flash from small journals that I have come to love and write in the past five years.
I was wrong. GIRLFRIENDS is a collection of short stories, but they are by no means “flash,” which is usually under 1,000 words. The shortest is around sixteen pages and my favorite, “Performance,” is close to thirty. Rather than choose words for their beauty, these are stories told in traditional narrative, interiority without sacrificing the outer world. The writer that comes to mind is Sally Rooney, and many of the scenes are like some of her best: at parties in which our main character feels out of place, too drunk, too sober, too young, too experienced. In essence, too much. That the characters in GIRLFRIENDS are trans is secondary to the universality of the mid-20s angst these stories represent.
It’s going in another Little Library, once I figure out which neighborhood needs it the most.
Little Puss Press (2023)