(lightly spoiler-y, go read the book first if you prefer to be surprised at every detail)
If you are, like me, a trans woman of a certain kind then you've read more than your fair share of coming-of-age stories -- although usually involving a second, or even third, adolescence. When I started reading Emme Lund's beautiful, and sometimes painful, debut novel I realized I couldn't remember the last according to Hoyle child-moves-through-adolescence book I'd read.
The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is the story of Owen. A boy born in Morning, Montana during the absolute worst flood Beaver Creek had seen. The story follows his early life in Morning and then a relocation to the Puget Sound around Olympia, Washington. A trip to San Francisco to end his life at seventeen frames the entire story.
Also, Owen has a hole in his chest where a java sparrow lives. Her name is Gail.
The magical realism of The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is adeptly deployed -- Owen's world is our world, just one where some children are Terrors with birds or bugs in their bodies. Each new bit of wonder is doled out slowly, and you're never quite sure what is a child's imagination and what is the magic of the world. Gail is both allegory and a literal character in the novel to contend with.
Owen's queer adolescence is both familiar and foreign to me. Set two decades after and 3,000 miles away from my own, Owen and his sister move in a world where they're able to start the process of experimentation and discovery in the open. The teachers seem distant and not policing of their student's sexuality or haircuts. Owen's uncle and guardian is a gentle soul. The used record stores of Olympia are awash in the queer and queer adjacent music of the previous generations of pacific northwest weirdos. Owen's sister is able to guide him to his peers and parties deep in the sound.
It's a world I look at with a bit of envy -- but also one where I still recognize too much of what I had to go through. The adults are distant enough to not mind Owen's queer punk haircut, but also too distant to protect Owen from bullies and other (in the words of the book) thieves of joy. The adults in his life are kinder, but still struggle to love their children in a way free of their own fears. Some remain as terrible as adults ever are, and with access to firearms to boot. And all the while, as Owen discovers the world, he has to hold the secret of Gail from nearly everyone.
It both made me laugh a little and sad when I started reading reviews of the book and noticed many never included the word trans, or would preface it with queer and, or went out of their way to note that Owen never states any intention to transition, or stressed all the different allegorical meanings Gail might have. (sometimes a wisecracking bird in your chest is just a wisecracking bird).
It makes me sad that the lives of trans women remain illegible to even the staunchest of allies. Not that we owe anyone that legibility, but that there are so few people around to tell kids like Owen that he doesn't have to wonder if he wants or wants-to-be his friend Ava -- he can just try it out. It's Owen's decision whether he'll be a pretty boy or a pretty girl, but The Boy with a Bird in His Chest is, to me, the story of a trans kid trying to find the love they need.
Save for the framing device the story is told in linear fragments, with each fragment a vignette of Owen's unfolding life. The book took me time to work though -- I'd start reading in the morning and then a chapter would leave me reeling at Owen's predicament and cast me back to my own youth. A youth I've only just started to reclaim as trans. It's a wonderful debut novel, but don't expect to rip through it. Its beauty is in lingering over the details and sitting with them. Letting them wash over you -- like a sparrow's feathers on your spine.