A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett
$21.95
$21.95
Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Casey Plett returns with a poignant suite of stories that center trans women—an ethereal meditation on partnership, sex, addiction, romance, groundedness, and love. The award-winning novelist finds quiet truths in prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days.
In "Hazel and Christopher," two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In "Perfect Places," a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In "Couldn't Hear You Talk Anymore," the narrator reflects on her tumultuous life and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman.
Plett's 2018 novel Little Fish—an Open Sesame favourite!—won a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award.
Selected praise:
"Casey Plett transports the reader from Pilot Mound, Manitoba, to Portland, Oregon, and back, tying together alternating perspectives and places with direct and detailed prose that's both heart-rending and heartwarming."
—Chatelaine
"Plett tells beautiful stories of trans women as they exist in the world: tangible, fallible, tender, and hardened."
—Xtra
"In A Dream of a Woman, connecting to yourself and the world doesn't seem to come from checking in with yourself and your body again and again. It comes from losing yourself in another and in the process, stumbling along the way into a closer relationship with your body and the world."
—Maisonneuve
"Plett has a characteristic style that manages to merge tenderness with Prairie toughness—a style on display in these stories of trans women seeking something—groundedness, maybe, but that dreamlike quality of desire, too."
—The Globe and Mail ("The Globe 100")
"Plett's voice is strong and fully realized in this collection. The language is tight and matter-of-fact, but also beautiful and sweeping in a way that makes you forget it's there. Plett wields language masterfully to share many vastly different trans experiences with readers."
—Prairie Fire
"Plett's trademark skills at authentic characterization, evocative setting, and insight into the lives of trans women are on full display in this superb collection of short stories. The stories crackle with quiet complexity as they cover topics like a woman returning to her Mennonite roots while visiting a lover and another leaving Portland's queer utopia to transition in New York's anonymity."
—Autostraddle ("Best Queer Books of the Year")
Casey Plett returns with a poignant suite of stories that center trans women—an ethereal meditation on partnership, sex, addiction, romance, groundedness, and love. The award-winning novelist finds quiet truths in prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days.
In "Hazel and Christopher," two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In "Perfect Places," a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In "Couldn't Hear You Talk Anymore," the narrator reflects on her tumultuous life and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman.
Plett's 2018 novel Little Fish—an Open Sesame favourite!—won a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award.
Selected praise:
"Casey Plett transports the reader from Pilot Mound, Manitoba, to Portland, Oregon, and back, tying together alternating perspectives and places with direct and detailed prose that's both heart-rending and heartwarming."
—Chatelaine
"Plett tells beautiful stories of trans women as they exist in the world: tangible, fallible, tender, and hardened."
—Xtra
"In A Dream of a Woman, connecting to yourself and the world doesn't seem to come from checking in with yourself and your body again and again. It comes from losing yourself in another and in the process, stumbling along the way into a closer relationship with your body and the world."
—Maisonneuve
"Plett has a characteristic style that manages to merge tenderness with Prairie toughness—a style on display in these stories of trans women seeking something—groundedness, maybe, but that dreamlike quality of desire, too."
—The Globe and Mail ("The Globe 100")
"Plett's voice is strong and fully realized in this collection. The language is tight and matter-of-fact, but also beautiful and sweeping in a way that makes you forget it's there. Plett wields language masterfully to share many vastly different trans experiences with readers."
—Prairie Fire
"Plett's trademark skills at authentic characterization, evocative setting, and insight into the lives of trans women are on full display in this superb collection of short stories. The stories crackle with quiet complexity as they cover topics like a woman returning to her Mennonite roots while visiting a lover and another leaving Portland's queer utopia to transition in New York's anonymity."
—Autostraddle ("Best Queer Books of the Year")
