Audacious Book Club: Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Our July Selection
In the opening scene of Gretchen Felker-Martin’s debut novel Manhunt, protagonists Beth and Fran are in pursuit of something, and it doesn’t take long to figure out what they’re looking for: a man drinking water from a forest pool “tilting his head back to swallow it like an alligator horking down a fish.” Beth takes the man down quickly—by the top of page two, she’s deftly shot him through the head with a bow and arrow—and Fran cuts him open just as quickly, harvesting both his adrenal glands and his testicles before the two move on. The two women aren’t thrill killers, however, because the man they take down isn’t an ordinary man—he’s a monster, one of millions made so by a virus that turns anyone with high testosterone into a zombie. Beth and Fran aren’t ordinary either —they’re survivors, trans women who are hunting these men and harvesting their organs because they contain reserves of estrogen that can be refined medicinally to keep anyone with high testosterone safe from the virus.
Like many people, I am less inclined towards apocalypse narratives since the beginning of 2020, but Felker-Martin’s reimagined horrorscape, with its trans sheroes and its wit and heart threading through the gore, captivated me, and so did her sophomore novel Cuckoo. In this new novel, the apocalypse is far more personal: it is 1995, and a group of queer and trans teens have found themselves banished by their families to Camp Resolution, a conversion camp that is even more horrific than the standard variety, because something at Camp Resolution is not right. Pretty soon, the small band of teens uncovers the truth: being brainwashed and tortured back into the closet isn’t the only conversion they need to fear.
Felker-Martin writes horror and sex with graphic, delicious ease, but part of what makes this novel so compelling is also in part what made Manhunt such a blistering, beautiful read: it’s not the just horrors that the teens endure as they try to escape Camp Resolution that resonate with readers but the secret intimacies they share and the enduring relationships they build with one another as they face the camp’s nightmares together. Shelby, Nadine, John, Felix, Jo and the others are fascinating characters, brimming with the insecurities and the mess of teenage life as well as moments of humor, heart, and sadness that give their lives and their stories richness and heft.
Cuckoo is a gory, gorgeous read, a book that both offers a gruesome satire of the practice of conversion therapy and highlights the enduring harm of depriving trans people of their bodily autonomy. But it is also a book that centers the experiences of queer and trans characters, affirms both their diversity and their humanity, and reminds us that queer and trans lives belong in every genre and every space. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this, and I look forward to discussing this novel with you throughout the month of July and at our Zoom discussion on July 30.
I hadn't heard of either of these and they sound so up my street - thank you!
Loved Manhunt! Looking forward to reading this as well!