You Whispered to Me, and We Took the Big Plunge

Some Strange Music Draws Me In

by Griffin Hansbury

2024 (W.W. Norton & Company)

Griffin Hansbury´s Some Strange Music Draws Me In is a remarkable and moving novel, a book that grabbed me emotionally as well as engaged me intellectually.

My first introduction to their work was under the name Jeremiah Moss. Their earlier nonfiction books Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York (2022) and Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul (2017) are superb, striking an exquisite balance of thorough research with astute observation. Reading Moss´ work, including their regular posts on social media, feels like being in the presence of a guide, walking through the debris and making sense of the detritus. These books help the reader make sense of the larger forces at work in our city, and how these are intimately impacting us.

Many of these same qualities appear in this novel, though Some Strange Music Draws Me In is operating in a different frequency. While ostensibly a work of fiction, Hansbury´s vulnerability shimmers on every page, and there is a level authenticity to this book that few other novels match. As I was reading the book, I felt there were numerous signals and gestures implying that there is a substantial amount of autobiography within these pages as there is imagination and creative license (to learn more about the origins of this novel, check out this recent conversation between the author and Eileen Myles). On one level, Some Strange Music Draws Me In is a trans coming of age story, beautiful and at times gut-wrenching. It is also a sobering interrogiation of how we formulate notions of gender, sex, and desire, an exploration of the myriad ways we create connection and community, and how sometimes loneliness is part of the cost of being true to oneself.

Set in rural Massachusetts, the chapters alternate between two transformative summers. In 1984, we meet Mel, an almost-14-year-old who doesn´t feel like she fits in. She "walks like a truck driver," intuitively knows she is not like the other girls in her life, like her older sister Donna, her mother, her best friend Jules. But when Sylvia blazes into town one day in a black Trans Am blaring Patti Smith, the quaint order of the small town of Shaffham is disrupted. Most of the town reacts to this stranger with prejudice and ignorance, while Mel is immediately intrigued. For her, this 23-year-old trans woman is a kindred spirit, and the pre-teen adopts her as a mentor. As she spends more and more time with Sylvia, she begins to envision new possibilities for herself and her future. New feelings begin to take root in hidden soil, suggesting a new future and new risks.

In the other chapters, set in 2019, we meet Max. He´s a trans man about to turn 50, clearing out his deceased mother´s home in Shaffham, and on probation from his teaching post because the private school thinks he is "politically incorrect" in his views on gender. The housecleaning and the return home also provides him with the opportunity for him to see if any reconciliation with his estranged sister Donna is possible, but also a chance to reflect upon that fateful summer so many years ago when he first met Sylvia. What role did Max play in how that summer ended? How responsible are we for what happens to other people? How much influence do we truly have on one another?

Hansbury´s fiction blazes with truth, so much so that at times this book made me wince with empathy and recognition. Some Strange Music Draws Me In is richly textured as well brilliantly crafted, a story whose strength arises in part from avoiding easy answers and oversimplified outcomes. This book wisely chooses to stay firmly in the grey, and invites readers to linger there with Mel, Jules, Sylvia, and Max to form one´s own conclusions, and reconcile their own contradictions. Hansbury is a gifted writer, and this book is one I cannot recommend enough.

Signed copies of Some Strange Music Draws Me In are available for purchase the Bureau for General Services - Queer Division.