Some Strange Music Draws Me in
Some Strange Music Draws Me in
Some Strange Music Draws Me in
Description
Description
It's the summer of 1984 in Swaffham, Massachusetts, when Mel (short for Melanie) meets Sylvia, a tough-as-nails trans woman whose shameless swagger inspires Mel's dawning self-awareness. But Sylvia's presence sparks fury among her neighbors and throws Mel into conflict with her mother and best friend. Decades later, in 2019, Max (formerly Mel) is on probation from his teaching job for, ironically, defying speech codes around trans identity. Back in Swaffham, he must navigate life as part of a fractured family and face his own role in the disasters of the past.
Populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, Some Strange Music Draws Me In is a propulsive page turner about multiple electrifying relationships--between a working-class mother and her queer child, between a trans man and his right-wing sister, and between a teenager and her troubled best friend. Griffin Hansbury, in elegant, arresting, and fearless prose, dares to explore taboos around gender and class as he offers a deeply moving portrait of friendship, family, and a girlhood lived sideways. A timely and captivating narrative of self-realization amid the everyday violence of small-town intolerance, Some Strange Music Draws Me In builds to an explosive conclusion, illuminating the unexpected ways that difference can provide a ticket to liberation.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
A touchstone LGBTQIA+ coming of age novel containing superbly drawn characters, a brilliant story, and knowing prose that constantly seeks to complicate simplistic narratives around gender, sexuality, and class.--Booklist, starred review
The coming-of-age, reckoning-with-gender story we have all needed for decades.--James Hannaham, author of Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta
[An] intimate examination of desire and destruction.--Grace Byron "Nation"
One of the best works of literary fiction I've read not just this year but in the last several.--Drew Broussard, Literary Hub, 38 Favorite Books of the Year
Populated by characters so real, you'll wish you could hang out with them and keep them safe.--Rufus Hickok "Bust"
Compelling...beautifully written. I loved the alternating perspectives of the pre/post transition dual time. Wonderful.--Sara Lawrence "Daily Mail"
A pleasure to read.--Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
A story of how latent queerness can point toward the exit from poverty and despair.... [A] book filled with compassion.--McKenzie Wark, author of Love and Money, Sex and Death
Max and Mel will leave you reeling with emotion, transformed and hopeful.--Andrés N. Ordorica, author of How We Named the Stars
Gorgeous, propulsive...filled with beauty and danger, youth and wisdom, and the lifesaving lifelines of counterculture.--Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up
Hansbury has crafted a truly rare thing--a gift and a guide.--Bryan Washington, author of Family Meal
From the first brilliant sentence, I knew I was going to love this book.--Ariel Schrag, author of Part of It
I loved this devastating marvel of a book.--Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
God damn I loved this book.... [Griffin] Hansbury has achingly captured the miracle of queer generations seeing and saving each other, without hiding the real struggle to connect across generations, our different times and traumas.--CJ Hauser, author of The Crane Wife
An uncompromising excavation of a transmasc adolescence.--Lauren John Joseph, author of At Certain Points We Touch
Incisive.... [S]harp, perceptive prose.... There are no easy answers in Hansbury's bracing narrative.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub date:
2025-04-15
Length:
320 pages
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