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A review by kell_xavi
Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
This book made me feel weird. So much of it was similar to my reality and my writing style, and yet I found an underlying uncanniness to the whole that I don’t think was intentional. Like a photograph half-developed: there are a few typographic mistakes, continuity oddnesses (slang that seems anachronistic); there are many discussions of transness that, as a transmasc person, came across to me as both overwrought and unable to find the centre. I was bothered by the novel’s circling, looking for and reflecting on and deeply desiring substance, but only building and building a show rather than hitting on the crux. It’s so difficult to explain what I mean, this strange experience of reading.
I enjoyed, was excited about, the use of a science fiction TV show and fandom as jumping off points for the novel. I was curious about internal references and Sol’s attachment to this fictional universe; finding self in it, or looking back and seeing self not yet found, in the interaction with it. I wanted more of archival work, beyond a single personal collection of someone who so evades knowing, and is never quite a useful character or metaphor.
The novel is so often steeped in Sol’s perspective, and while we can’t name everything neurodivergence, there is a sort of autistic quality to his continued unhappiness, dissociation, distance, single-minded deep interests, loneliness, and difficulty anticipating social situation… he has a particular kind of oddness, and Fellman has a particular way of describing both his thoughts and his vampire body, that reads as autistic (but unaware of it) to someone who has ASD. The things I liked and the things that didn’t work may both be rooted in this factor (the perspective, the masking/ignorance).
I think this book will stay memorable, but right now it’s still caught, half-processed, in my mind.
I enjoyed, was excited about, the use of a science fiction TV show and fandom as jumping off points for the novel. I was curious about internal references and Sol’s attachment to this fictional universe; finding self in it, or looking back and seeing self not yet found, in the interaction with it. I wanted more of archival work, beyond a single personal collection of someone who so evades knowing, and is never quite a useful character or metaphor.
The novel is so often steeped in Sol’s perspective, and while we can’t name everything neurodivergence, there is a sort of autistic quality to his continued unhappiness, dissociation, distance, single-minded deep interests, loneliness, and difficulty anticipating social situation… he has a particular kind of oddness, and Fellman has a particular way of describing both his thoughts and his vampire body, that reads as autistic (but unaware of it) to someone who has ASD. The things I liked and the things that didn’t work may both be rooted in this factor (the perspective, the masking/ignorance).
I think this book will stay memorable, but right now it’s still caught, half-processed, in my mind.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Car accident, Medical content, Blood, and Dysphoria
Minor: Transphobia