"Like a strange, beautiful, chaotically decorated home for all those who crack its pages.” —Vogue
A TORONTO STAR BOOK FOR FALL
A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR FALL
A LAMBDA LITERARY REVIEW MOST ANTICIPATED LGBTQIA+ BOOK FOR FALL
ON THE "BRILLIANT" AXIS OF THE NEW YORK MAGAZINE APPROVAL MATRIX
AN NBC NEWS QUEER BOOK FOR 2023
"Intimate and perceptive … comes to life in the details that fill early adulthood for a cast of memorable young queer and trans characters — escape-artist cats, house parties that are equal parts awkward and alluring, and dead-end jobs abided until real life begins.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Girlfriends sounds a loud bell announcing the change of guard: a generational arrival. Here is a writer who can scrap with the likes of Ann Beattie or Richard Ford but attends parties to which those boomers (or for that matter, we millennials) would never get invited.”
—Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby
“A welcome arrival of a fresh and new voice in short fiction … a strong talent … [Zhou] has a knack for creating memorable scenes and her stories feel lived in.”
—Toronto Star
“I can’t believe this is Emily Zhou’s debut – it’s one of the most well-crafted short story collections I’ve had the pleasure of reading ... Zhou captures her characters in moments of change – subtle ones that are no less profound for their quietness. With its cutting wit and clear prose, Girlfriends is well worth a read.”
—NPR
“Compelling … vibrant, rich … she brings seven startlingly authentic voices to life … [Girlfriends] is a phenomenal debut.”
—Michigan Daily
“Girlfriends is great…finely observed and funny and, in a way I find a bit difficult to describe, so very queer. Partly this is because they go about various recognizably queer business, but also partly I think because their fears and insecurities and the places they get stuck feel queer in a way it never quite does when straight people write queer characters—Zhou is both a great observer and also, clearly, someone with a clear and practised memory for how it felt to have so many feelings.”
—Xtra
“In the last few years we’ve been blessed with several stellar entries into the trans woman lit canon, and Girlfriends is looking to be the best of the year. A tight short story collection that never overstays its welcome…heartily recommended.”
—Colorado Sun
“Tender, incisive portraits of trans womanhood, the ties that bind women to one another, and the complex relationships of youth. Simultaneously aligned with queer coming-of-age story collections of previous generations and dexterously subverting and revitalizing the genre, these seven stories offer a glimpse into the future of queer literature…this bright writer is leading the way.”
—Kirkus
“Zhou’s vibrant debut collection chronicles the often-messy lives of her young trans women protagonists … [they] spring to life through dialogue, body postures, and personal style, whether it’s facial piercings, flannel, or hoop earrings. Zhou’s animated depictions of youthful angst and queer desire have much to offer.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Beautifully rendered and utterly compelling, Emily Zhou’s stories remind me of late night phone conversations with a dear friend—a space that always feels fresh, no matter how many social triumphs and dysfunctions are nursed and examined—and where despite impossible ambiguities and distances, love strikes.”
—Dodie Bellamy, author of The Letters of Mina Harker and Cunt-Ups
“Reading these pages immersed me in the slow transformative thrill of refusal. Emily Zhou knows how to arrive at an ending. Her stories capture the particular texture of those moments in which we turn away, not yet knowing what we are turning towards, but certain that whatever habits and attitudes we’ve become used to are over.”
—H Felix Chau Bradley, author of Personal Attention Roleplay
“Emily Zhou is a writer that doesn't let you take sides. In these exquisite and discomforting stories characters talk at each other and rarely say what they really feel while their body language and their bodies find a way to make themselves heard. Girlfriends is untidy, hilarious, heartbreaking, and always satisfying. Zhou is a true witness. This is the fiction we've been waiting for.”
—Corinne Manning, author of We Had No Rules
“Soaked in melancholy and the easy rhythm of café hangs, ad hoc photoshoots, and cutting remarks, these seven sharply observed stories navigate identities, fraying relationships, and the parties and mores of today's transsexual demimonde. Here Emily Zhou comes fully into her own terrifying powers: a writer to watch, just as she's watching all of us.”
—Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun
2023-08-26
Tender, incisive portraits of trans womanhood, the ties that bind women to one another, and the complex relationships of youth.
Simultaneously aligned with queer coming-of-age story collections of previous generations and dexterously subverting and revitalizing the genre, these seven stories offer a glimpse into the future of queer literature. They capture Gen Z’s best traits: intuitiveness and self-assurance. The characters are candid and more self-aware than previous generations, but focused on the normal concerns of youth: relationships, sex, work, and how to be a person in the world. The dialogue feels natural and brings each character to life. In "Means to an End," 20-year-old Leonora has dropped out of NYU and is “the fourth tenant of the lesbian love triangle apartment.” Her roommates’ constant conflict creates a fraught living environment that frames her own low-frequency internal instability as she grows into herself and tries to figure out how to live life on her own terms. Relying on the emotional growth of the characters for propulsion, Zhou scatters her text with poetic gestures that hint at resolution but leave the characters’ preoccupations ultimately unresolved. For example, thinking about a tense conversation the night before with a woman she had feelings for, Leonora describes the apartment in detail and notes that “the light was turning soft and forgiving.” Then she does the dishes that had caused tension among her roommates the night before: “At the end of the dishes, there was an empty sink. I watched the water run down the drain for a moment.” These images suggest that, while the messiness of her life and her relationship with the woman is tidied up for now, a sense of emptiness remains; the character conveys her emotions without directly saying how she feels. The final story, “Gap Year,” documents the narrator’s life in a series of dated fragments that conclude with an insight that feels true to the protagonists of all the other stories: “Maybe what I was trying to capture in these pages was your sense of purpose, the way you seemed to cut a straight, clear path through the world….[Sometimes you] would make me feel like everything extraneous had fallen away and I lived suddenly in a clean, clear reality that seemed navigable.”
Could use more polish, but this bright writer is leading the way into an exciting future for queer literature.
