Reviewed by Princess Gonzales
Boysgirls
by Katie Farris
Marick Press
December 2011, Paperback, 76 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1934851319
Kate Farris’s Boysgirls is the type of read that lures you in with its engaging, inventive voice where it brings you close just to push you away. It leaves you in a hot-and-cold relationship, expecting you to pick up the pieces of your shock, yearning for concrete meaning and more of this whiplash it gives you in literary form! The prose is bold, in-your-face as Farris calls the reader out for being a voyeur. Normally as readers, we’re used to being observers of these fictional characters in these literary worlds. We cry at the loss of life, we laugh at the comedic highlights of an enemy-to-lovers relationship, and we cheer for our underdog when they accomplish what is seemingly impossible for them—this isn’t the case for Boysgirls as the narrator seeks the reader out to be an active participant in these stories, to not find escapism in fantasies but to face these stories with an open mind.
Farris explores the human condition (regardless of gender) underneath the guise of the modern myths that lend the mystical to entirely mortal issues to beings akin to legends or local folklore. The girls and boys of Boygirls in their different forms strive for identity separate from their titles or names, they as find themselves being much more than what they are deemed to be. They too contain multitudes. To repeat Farris, “This is the new literature.”
Girls. These girls are tired, they’re depressed, they wish for change the type all of us with strong desires dream about. The standout girl for me was “Mise En Abyme” which is the first story of the collection. It’s such a great and strong start. It touches upon the fantastical of absurd beings in myths (centaurs, tengu, gnomes) and the value they give to society. People of this universe aren’t repulsed by the girl with a mirror for a face. She is revered by the people because of her mirror face, because she is a living mise en abyme—our girl is the water Narcissus gazes lovingly into. She’s a seemingly passive character who is acted upon as an object, not just because she is woman, she’s a mirror. In her own reflection she cannot see herself as Farris writes, “For have you ever looked into a mirror with another mirror? Nothing reflected into nothing. An infinity of nothing.” She brings joy to others through her one use, a joy that she herself cannot feel because of her one revered trait, her mirror face. She can hear and see, yet she cannot speak. Sadly, she doesn’t have a name, she’s only referred to her use than herself. The one thing she yearns for is a mouth, a mouth to devour food or words to fill her for all she sees in her reflection is the infinity of nothingness because at least she can feel whole when her stomach is filled. It’s ironic since she is a mirror who is reflecting on her plight of being known for just being a mirror. Typically you’d think she would find herself in the deadly circle of over-thinking: her existence, the reason for her creation, or how does she survival without any sustenance? In the end, she finds solace in nothingness. She comes to terms with it. She reasons she isn’t just her function; she is someone who has much to reflect on as anyone who looks upon her, it isn’t in her reflection, after all it is in her blood, the spine that holds up the mirror that also contains her brain where all her musings are held and stored in. Because she reasons, “I also contain multitudes.”
Boys. Unlike the girls, the boys are threaded into a narrative that flows through its snippets. It follows only two characters, the Boy with one wing and the Inventor, whose identities are tied with these titles they are given. The Boy with one wing is your romantic tragic character who wishes to fly once more. He’s quite persistent with his wish as we are told he is a fixture in the town, especially at the beach where he muses about his current state, “A halfway boy. The Boy stands at the water knowing he’s no longer a boy, knowing; he hasn’t been a boy for a long time. Knowing he will always be a boy.” There are so many ways to grapple with passage as you can pull a meaning of puberty and of never feeling “adult-like” into adulthood or you can break it into the Boy and his dual nature: human and animal—or you can spin it to the Boy will always be a “boy” to the people. He has become this local legend, the romanticized tragic hero who wants to fly again, so he’ll always be the name the people given him. The Inventor also cannot escape the name he was given, he is the inventor of invented things. He could only invent objects or abstract concepts that he knows and has created, which is a strange paradox as how does he invent in the first place? The Inventor is seemingly a miracle-maker or a type of healer in this world, making him highly sought-after for his ability to invent useful items like Prozac, prostheses and penicillin. These two are beings that are trapped in these fantasies of others and in the fantasies of their own. The obsessions of flight or the beautiful boy that walks into your waiting room to the feelings of love being compared to the freedom of soaring through the air. The ending leaves one stunned, trying to piece together logic in the illogical of this wonderful world Farris creates.
Farris successfully grabs onto the reader and throwing them into the center of the action, along the meta, fourth-wall breaking asides that forces the readers to interact and not just observe. These unnamed characters who are often referred to their functions have broken through those constraining words. These forms created new life, new beings, and new meanings to what literal hybrid forms as Farris proves new literature should be just as bold as she demonstrated.
About the reviewer: Princess Gonzales is an English undergraduate student from San Diego State University. Of course she loves reading, because if she didn’t why wouldn’t she be writing these reviews? An enjoyer of the weird and experimental—the ones where explaining the narrative to a friend makes them question your sanity—to the cozy and cliché, she hopes to one day to bring the same enjoyment to readers of her own work. For now she’s working to find her place in the small, yet varied world of the publishing industry.