Publishers Weekly
09/11/2023
Emmanuel debuts with a lyrical and bittersweet meditation on memory and trans identity set over the course of one weekend. Phoebe is a 30-year-old PhD candidate leading a solitary existence in Copenhagen (“By living alone,” she narrates, “I am indeed surrounding myself only with those who put me at ease”). Her self-containment is shattered when she receives a visit from Grace, a mercurial ex-girlfriend from her pre-transition days, whom she hasn’t seen in seven years. The two catch up as they stroll through the city, taking in tourist attractions like the Tivoli Gardens amusement park and the bronze Little Mermaid statue, and stumble over each other’s words. For Phoebe, answering Grace’s questions about transition feels like “pulling legs off a spider.” Grace’s motives for the visit remain vague, and the pair’s reconnection feels tentative. Even after they fall back into bed together, Phoebe wonders what to do with their complex history (“All romances are an accumulation of references... peculiar and impenetrable, elusive, even evasive”). Emmanuel’s nearly plotless novel can at times be all of these things too, yet each page contains beautiful sentences as the two women seek clues about their future. This is one to savor. Agent: Liv Maidment, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Fiction
“Wild Geese is a sensitive, thoughtful novel about personal identity, the loss of illusions, and growth into love and wholeness.” —Foreword Reviews, starred review
“Bittersweet and meandering in the best way, this is fiction worth lingering over.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Wild Geese is proof that Soula is the most exciting new voice in Irish writing.” —i-D
“A lyrical and bittersweet meditation on memory and trans identity set over the course of one weekend… This is one to savor.” —Publishers Weekly
“A trans Before Sunset set in Copenhagen? Yes, please!” —Electric Literature
“A tale of migrating like the majestic honking birds in the sky.” —Independent Book Review
“Wild Geese is heartfelt, thought-provoking and beautifully crafted. Soula Emmanuel is a phenomenal talent.” —Laura Kay, author of The Split
“Phoebe Forde, an Irish trans woman living in Scandinavia, illustrates with insight, candor and wit, the chrysalis of loneliness, in which she, and others perhaps, find themselves living. I am reminded that some women still have to leave Ireland for the chance to become themselves. Wild Geese is an intimate and deeply affecting portrait. Destined to be a classic of migrant literature.” —Carmel McMahon, author of In Ordinary Time
“Soula Emmanuel’s prose is breathtaking: searingly sharp, deliciously funny, profound. Wild Geese is a beautiful and devastating read. An extraordinary debut. I loved this deeply intelligent and emotionally powerful novel.” —Danielle McLaughlin, author of The Art of Falling
“Wild Geese is small and amazingly dense, a virtuosic miniature painted with a single hair brush under a magnifying glass, crammed implausibly full of lyricism, jokes, passionate cries, questionable aphorisms, and savagely well-observed dialogue. The novel is also doing something really unusual: in a political context of rising transphobia, and amid a trans cultural scene that reacts with increasing separatism, it takes frighteningly seriously the question of the relations between trans and cis women, both in our shared womanhood, and through our very real differences. In vindicating the possibility that we might love and help each other, despite everything, Wild Geese attains a hard-won, triumphant generosity.” —Cat Fitzpatrick, author of The Call-Out: A Novel in Rhyme
“In gorgeous, poignant prose, Soula Emmanuel’s phenomenal debut brings us the tangled life of Phoebe as she receives an unexpected visit from an ex-girlfriend, stirring ghosts from the past and hauntings of the present. Intimate and lit up from the inside, Wild Geese moves through a cosmology of intimacies with incredible preciseness, humor, and lyricism. A terrific read that looks at a trans experience unflinchingly, distilling the mundane life of love and loss, Wild Geese is sassy, cataclysmic, and full of life.” —Julián Delgado Lopera, author of Fiebre Tropical: A Novel
“I am so here for this fantasy of reconciliation between ex-lovers thrown together for a rich and fleeting weekend of museum snark, strap-on pranks, and sumptuous European breakfasts. I am here for this investigation of different womanhoods, trans and cis, and for this poetic look back at the terra incognita of our pretranssexual twenties. And I am here for this conjuration of real, messy friendship and its spaces of complicated trust. I am here for Wild Geese.” —Jeanne Thornton, author of Summer Fun
Kirkus Reviews
2023-06-21
A trans Irishwoman living in Denmark unexpectedly reunites with her ex-girlfriend in this introspective debut.
Phoebe Forde left Dublin three years ago to pursue a Ph.D. in urban water and gender in sub-Saharan Africa at a university in Sweden. In that time, she’s built a subdued commuter life in Copenhagen. She may have few friends outside of her 10-year-old bichon frisé, Dolly—she didn’t do anything to celebrate turning 30—but it’s here that she’s been able to transition in relative peace and quiet. That calm is punctured by former girlfriend Grace Keaney’s sudden appearance on Phoebe’s doorstep one Thursday evening. While Grace presents her unannounced visit as a spontaneous vacation, Phoebe is left wondering if she is actually after closure, a second-chance romance, or something else. The novel follows the pair throughout a long weekend as they explore the city, flirt, rehash their past, and catch each other up on how their respective lives have changed in the seven years since their breakup. Emmanuel plumbs the depths of her characters’ loneliness and desires to be known, and the sense of history in Phoebe and Grace’s conversations, alternating between warm and awkward, rings true. The prose is occasionally bogged down by self-indulgent metaphor, but there are enough incisive and funny gems (“But that’s Grace: a woman to whom done-things are discretionary indulgence. She’s always had the mobility and tact of a Fisher Price telephone”) to carry the more unwieldy sections.
Bittersweet and meandering in the best way, this is fiction worth lingering over.
