Happy Pride Month, dear readers! I’ve written a few times on this blog about how Gothic literature has been used to explore marginalized genders and sexualities, both in joyful, celebratory ways and as a way of exploring societal and personal anxieties about not conforming to the norm. Many queer authors have found their place in the field of Gothic fiction, and you’ll also find many queer characters both as villains and as protagonists (or sometimes, both). Today I want to highlight a few of my favorite recent reads in Gothic-descended genres that are written from the point of view of a nonbinary or ungendered protagonist:
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
My favorite T. Kingfisher book I’ve read so far, this mycological horror novel is a brilliant retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. And just as amazing as that premise and the book’s viscerally creepy cover is the voice of the narrator Alex Easton, a nonbinary soldier who comes from a culture and language that has multiple sets of non-gendered pronouns. Alex uses ka/kan, warrior pronouns that reflect the cultural conception of soldiers as genderless. While some veterans return to using gendered pronouns as soon as their military service is done, Alex continues to feel at home with genderless terms and ka’s identity is understood and respected by old friends and new acquaintances alike. Another set of non-gendered pronouns plays an important role in the story: apart from ka/kan, Alex’s language also has va/van which are used to refer to children. The physically and mentally unwell Madeleine Usher uses these childish pronouns to refer to the strange sentience that seems to have infested the waters of the tarn. You can read my full review of What Moves the Dead here.
Base Notes by Lara Elena Donnelly
When it comes to representation in fiction, we support queer rights and queer wrongs…. Lara Elena Donnelly creates a wonderfully compelling antihero in Vic Fowler, the narrator of the brilliantly clever thriller Base Notes. It’s unclear exactly how Vic identifies because Lara manages to go the full length of the novel without using any third-person pronouns for Vic or directly addressing the subject of Vic’s gender. Vic is an unscrupulous murderer who revels in manipulating friends and enemies alike in pursuit of Vic’s own goals. Although clearly fitting in among queer artists and trade workers, Vic treats almost all personal details as vulnerabilities that could be exploited. One gets the sense that Vic is intentionally obscuring any conception of gender (or lack thereof) from the reader out of self-protection and perhaps also so that Vic can keep this aspect fluid and take on new identities whenever Vic comes under too much scrutiny from the authorities and must flee and start over. Though not a role model by any means, Vic is an extremely fun character to read about and Lara really shows off her craft when writing from Vic’s perspective. You can read my full review of Base Notes here.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
The Murderbot Diaries is a science fiction series, beginning with the novella All Systems Red, which centers on a rogue security android who sardonically refers to itself as Murderbot. Murderbot is an artificial construct, created out of both technology and organic tissue, which allows it to straddle the sometimes-blurry line between robot and human. After hacking the software meant to keep it in check, Murderbot has far more agency and autonomy than most other androids and can often pass among and disguise itself as human. Like the creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Murderbot learns about human society, history, and emotions through media. Where the creature had classic texts like Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s Lives, Murderbot obsessively watches soap operas, its favorite being one called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. These television dramas not only help Murderbot better understand the found family of humans it has reluctantly come to care for, but Murderbot also often uses them to help process its own emotions. However, unlike Frankenstein’s creature, Murderbot doesn’t yearn to be fully accepted into human society and treated as one of them. Instead, Murderbot takes pride in its android identity, eschewing human concepts like gender and sexuality and preferring to use the pronoun “it.” Over the course of the series, Murderbot finds community not just with humans but also with other constructs and artificial intelligences. The world of The Murderbot Diaries is populated by diverse human cultures that recognize a variety of genders alongside sentient non-humans that exist outside the concept of gender entirely. I haven’t reviewed this series on the blog at all since it is not especially Gothic, but I highly recommend reading it!
What Grows in the Dark by Jaq Evans
While the narrator’s identity and (lack of) gender is a major focus in the above three books, in contrast it is fairly incidental in What Grows in the Dark, which I just reviewed last month. Brigit Weylan is nonbinary, but she uses she/her pronouns and doesn’t always feel like getting into the details of her gender identity when first meeting new people. The book’s primary focus is on her relationship with her dead sister and the eldritch entity that lives in the woods. But just as uncomfortable memories of the events surrounding her sister’s death begin to resurface when Brigit returns to Ellis Creek, so too do memories of what it felt like growing up queer in a small, conservative town. Brigit also finds herself bonding with a former classmate who stayed in the town and has since come out as trans. While speculative fiction can often provide interesting lenses through which to explore unusual or transgressive perspectives on gender and identity, sometimes it’s nice to just see queer people existing in a horror novel.
What books are you reading this Pride Month? Do you have any recommendations of other books with nonbinary or ungendered protagonists I should add to this list? Let me know in the comments!