#boy or girl

Symptoms of Being Human
by Jeff Garvin

When you start any novel, what do you notice first about the narrator? I imagine concurrent to style of voice, you make immediate assumptions about gender. I, in fact, often actively search for narrators of a certain gender. I imagine there are some readers out there that actively avoid narrators of a certain gender. Actually, the old chestnut that they like to sell writers is that girls will read stories about boys and girls, but boys are only interested in stories about boys. #alternativefact

So, then, what do you do when the narrator’s answer to “boy or girl” is a simple nod?

Riley is starting at a new high school halfway through the four arduous years, a terrifying plight for any narrator, but exacerbated more acutely by the fact that Riley identifies as “gender fluid,” -  as male or female or anywhere along the spectrum on any given day.  Compound this situation by a congressman father running for re-election and an accidental fame-by-blog-post scenario and you’ve got the makings of a modern cyber hero - and heroine - tale.

The book came out five minutes ago and has already been recognized as a 2017 Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection by American Library Association, among Most Anticipated Debuts by Barnes & Noble, and in 5 YA Novels You Need to Read in the First Half of 2016byHuffington Post. The list of notable mentions is exhaustively long this far. And why?

Well, it’s a fun read to be sure, but what is perhaps most notable about this book is that like all good fiction, it manages to implicate the reader in its exploration. Heck, the gender-fluid narrator is even self-critical. Why are we all so eager to categorize? To label? To break down? Is a thing defined less scary? More relatable? Or is it simply habit? A result of a lifetime of pronouns we’ve been fed and regurgitated? Or, it is more insidious? Is it segregated children’s toy aisles and blue and pink cake reveals and seventy-seven cents on the dollar? Why do we see the world how we do, and why do we cling so ferociously to our arbitrary classifications?

Symptoms of Being Human is destined to join the ranks of the young modern underdog tales like Wonder, Eleanor & Park,andCurious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. It’s a story we’ve never heard before from a narrator we didn’t know we needed - a narrator who invites us to see the world from a slightly less-defined perspective.