A Selfish Trans Mom Breaks Stereotypes

“The Junction of Things,” published this September, is the second installment in Louisa Linde’s Mythos trilogy (though the book can also be read well on its own, without having read the previous novel). In the novel we follow Elina, a sensitive young woman who bears a lot of responsibility, but also carries many stories inside her, and who “as a child loved talking to the gods.”
In our reality, Elina might become a major novelist, but in the reality of “The Junction of Things,” that path is blocked. An authoritarian government, bands of raiders, and brutal climate shifts force her to fight for survival. Together with her mother Ruth and her small, quiet brother Elvin, she manages to scrape by on repaired bicycles, staggeringly small food rations, and stolen chickens, living in an unheated garden shed on the city’s edge.
Elina’s small family unit serves as the fulcrum of the narrative, because after Ruth disappears, it falls to Elina to take care of her brother. At night she tells him stories of bygone times, great warriors, and sacrifices, yet she can barely imagine ever being as brave as the figures in her tales.

The reason Ruth disappears lies in her hope for a vaginoplasty, because Ruth is a trans woman. I really like narratives that feature trans parents, and I was curious how Linde would handle this dynamic. What the novel at times depicts could be read as an authentic portrait of a daughter grappling with a parent’s transition. Certainly some readers will see themselves in it. At least cis readers. “I will have surgery to become a real woman,” is uttered in the heated argument between Ruth and Elina, in which Ruth wants to spend the family’s last savings to finally “become a real woman,” as it’s framed for her in the scene.

That scene struck me as almost ridiculous and saturated with clichés, to the point that I could barely bring myself to read it. The portrayal of Ruth as selfish, out-of-touch, and materialistic reminded me of the heavily criticized cisgender fairy tale “The Danish Girl.” As is often the case, I want to stress that there are bad trans parents as well as bad cis parents, and that one can certainly depict trans people in a critical light, just as cis people are. But when this portrayal of trans people is so one-dimensional and flat, it feeds into discriminatory notions. It’s too easy to put the book down and think: Yes, this is how they all are, and finally someone says it out loud.
Ruth’s Trans Identity Is Psychologized
We later spend some time inside Ruth’s head, reading lines like: “If you don’t accept me this way, I will kill myself. Do you want that? (…) Do you want to be responsible for me never being happy?” I can’t even begin to imagine what deep misunderstanding or terrible experiences with a trans person could give rise to such words. Ruth stays underdeveloped; her trans identity is psychologized. The sensitivity required to tell a fragile, alcoholic, torn, yet also resilient and joyful figure like Ruth (who is in all promotional materials and the back cover misgendered as “father”) with understanding or even solidarity simply isn’t present in the novel. I’m tired of these clichés and basically have no desire to become the language police here, instead I’d rather engage with the more interesting dynamics of the book.

There is, for example, the relationship between Elina and her boyfriend János, a core part of the story. János somehow keeps finding small treasures for Elina, and the two meet secretly in abandoned mansions and wild ruins. Despite the dystopian backdrop, their young love flourishes, but often falters because of Elina’s reticence. The on-page tension of their relationship feels real, sometimes painful. In particular, the way the book treats the protagonist’s shame and desire feels sincere, which I appreciated.

The Novel Feels Like an Unedited Diary

With Linde’s writing style, I never quite warmed to it over the roughly 280 pages. At times the author delivers striking, simultaneously vivid and eerie images. (“I probe toward the brother as if he were a wild animal that must be coaxed into a cage” or “When I see him, it’s like standing before a loving wall.”) Most of the time, however, the narration is busy recounting events minute by minute, which over time becomes exhausting and squeezes the story’s naturally slow pace for breath: “‘János was there when you were asleep.’ János? János was here? Where is he now? Is he here? I quickly search the room. Is he in the corner and I just can’t see him? I try to sit up quickly, but I slip. János?’

Constant repetitions, exclamations, and pages-long emphases on how bad Elina’s life is push you toward feeling like you’re reading an entirely unedited diary. Rather than coming across as empathetic, brave, and perceptive, the main character sometimes reads as flat and irritating, no matter how justified her exhaustion and despair are given her harsh circumstances.

Elvin and János, by contrast, I found to be very well-drawn characters, which may be partly because I wasn’t forced to listen to their constant inner monologue. The 19-year-old narrator’s phrasing can feel a bit old-fashioned and doesn’t always fit the voice of a late-teen in the mid-21st century (“About the new girl from the south, have I told you about her? (…) Such a funny thing. And really smart!”). They contribute to the sense that this future world is told in the tones of the early 20th century and doesn’t offer many fresh ideas.

The Romanticized Image of Nature in the Novel Is Irritating

More contemporary dystopian tropes play a lesser role. The reader is returned to bare human existence—hunger, fatigue, love—and that can work rather well too. The climate-wracked world is haunted by ghostly rumors and small monsters living in boxes in the backyard. These magical-realist moments can be read as fantastical elements, or as outgrowths of Elina’s increasingly fragile psyche, and they largely remain fascinating in their psychological ambiguity. The short chapters, arranged like scenes in a dramatic film, demonstrate Linde’s strong sense of narrative rhythm, which is a definite strength.

All the same, it wasn’t enough to prevent the book’s romanticized, anthropomorphized nature imagery, paired with a broader distrust of humanity, from eventually wearing thin. In a story like this, one might not need cooperative, slow-building social organization and hope; instead, it asks for a grand sacrifice by one person, Elina, to save the world. In the end, that sacrifice comes to resemble a form of suicide, one that she ties to the myths and fantastical stories that haunt her. Taken together, I found this rather peculiar and not very gripping given the drama promised by the setup.

I want to enjoy a cautious, relationship-centered, deeply emotional narrative. But the underdeveloped style, the implied psychological depth that the characters simply do not offer, makes it difficult for me. The portrait of the suffering young woman may feel realistic, but it is also so heartbreakingly melodramatic that it reads as silly and becomes a frustrating reading experience for me. Yet: for readers who find these elements intriguing—the young heroine, the rich mythic tapestry running through the story, or the tight-knit web of character interactions—I would definitely recommend picking up the book and forming your own impression.