What Even Is This?: 8 Books That Blend & Transcend Genre

If you’ve ever interacted with me on the internet, you probably already know how much I love this book. It’s a literary mystery and a historical archive, an academic satire and a bizarre adventure, a study in queer excess and an ode to Black art. The protagonist, Mathilda, has always been enamored with the Bloomsbury Group and other artists from the 1920s and ’30s. When she discovers a photo of Hermia Druitt, a forgotten Black modernist, she sets out to learn everything she can about her — a journey that takes her to some truly surprising places.

This novel does something remarkable: it blends genres sequentially. As in: at first, you think you’re reading a middle grade detective novel. And then suddenly you are very, very not. It’s a book best discovered for yourself. All you need to know is that it’s one of the most profoundly weird and profoundly beautiful queer and trans coming-of-age novels I’ve ever read.

In this wildly queer speculative adventure, there are spells and hexes. There is an otherworldly realm known as the Shadowlands, through which every trans person must pass at some point in their lives. There’s a mildly disturbing but also kind of radical worldwide organization of trans services (and a lot more). Subway cars change color, and technology is very, very weird. When a trans dog walker accidentally hexes the wrong person and sends him to the Shadowlands, he’s suddenly required to drop everything to get him out. It’s exactly as zany as it sounds.

This novel is technically more form-blending than genre-blending, but I’m counting it because it’s so unlike other contemporary novels I’ve read. Sahara is a queer Black college sophomore who’s not okay for a million reasons, including that Black students on campus keep dying. She refers to her depression as LP (for “life partner”) and attempts to hide her very real pain behind a cheerful facade. The book takes the form of a thesis, which she plans to present to the academic committee before her own death. It includes art, playlists, recipes, photos, collages, letters, journal entries, and other assorted ephemera. It’s an intense and often painful novel, but it’s also a celebration of Black friendship and art.

I read this book about a year ago, and I still don’t really understand what happened, but that did not stop me from loving it. It blends elements of dystopian fiction, mystery/thrillers, sci-fi, and 1980s detective stories. But it’s also a family drama and a moving exploration of grief. And it’s a little bit of an Asian American media studies PhD thesis. The narrative moves back and forth between three timelines: an 8-year-old boy who’s just lost his mother; a 28-year-old who’s just lost his job; and a 48-year-old whose participation in a TV exposé of a failed tech company causes him to look back at his life with a new perspective.

At first glance, this book is somewhat straightforward. It’s set during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Maali Almeida, a gay war photographer, wakes up dead with no memory of who killed him. He only has seven moons to figure out what happened and tie up all the loose ends he left behind before leaving the world forever. But what Karunatilaka does with all of these elements is bigger than the sum of its parts. He blends queer humor, a murder mystery, political satire, and speculative fiction into something distinctly new.

This book of short stories is playful in form and subject matter. It reads like an archive of trans British history. Half the time I didn’t know whether I was reading fiction or nonfiction — and in the end, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes fictional queer and trans history is as important to tell as real-life history, especially since so much of the real-life history has been deliberately erased. This collection includes academic papers, oral histories, film scripts, letters, diaries, a collection of blog posts, and more. The structure of each story perfectly matches the time period it’s reflecting on.

Some books transcend genre by blending it into new shapes. And some books, like this one, are firmly rooted outside of Western conceptions of genre to begin with. This novel is rooted in Anishinaabe storytelling traditions. It’s impossible to summarize — it’s an epic poem, a meditation on community and belonging, an adventure, a coming-into-self story, and a whole lot more. Simpson utilizes white space, a chorus of POVs, and poetic formatting to tell a moving, powerful story that genre cannot contain.