The Queer Horror of Negative Space

A few weeks ago, I read the horror novel Negative Space by B. R. Yeager. I loved it in all its oppressive, disturbing, befuddling glory, and while it is certainly not for everyone, it made me take a fresh look at the way queer fiction is conceptualized. Make no mistake, Negative Space IS a queer novel, despite the lack of narrative tags or tropes that might make it obvious. No character ever utters the words gay, lesbian, or other markers of a fixed identity; there is no coming-out plotline, no persecution by ignorant townsfolk; in the uncontrollable chaos of their lives, the teenage characters flow from partner to partner, identity to identity, denying to the reader the stability and sense of understanding provided by labels. The queerness of Negative Space is a queerness of excess, of overflowing beyond identity itself.


Negative Space takes place in a fictional city struggling with unemployment, ennui, and teenage deaths. It follows three(?) teenage protagonists linked only by their age and their connection to Tyler, a charismatic and unstable force of both tricksterish malice and bottomless sadness. This traditional setup falls off more and more steeply as the novel progresses, revealing a hidden reality governed by unfamiliar and terrifying principles. It is through this ontological instability that the novel’s queerness becomes apparent.


In a piece written for the website Literary Hub, author Brandon Taylor writes that “Shame, pain, and an intense desire to assimilate are the most legible aspects of queer life as perceived by the heteronormative overculture.” Notably, the same characteristics of shame, pain and desire to assimilate resonate equally well with another demographic: teenagers. The novel takes this resonance and uses it to queer teenage adolescence itself, a state in which identity is in constant flux. The characters have as little desire to make it through their teenage years to the promised stability of adulthood as they do in defining their gender or sexual preferences, and while they certainly experience shame and pain, any desire to assimilate is stymied by a world that, in true horror fashion, is revealed as fundamentally hostile to their existence. The town’s epidemic of teenage deaths reveals life itself to be an unstable state, one further destabilized by the unexplained return of one of the dead later on in the novel. The pervasive queer rejection of fixed identity seems almost to dissolve the veil between life and death.


The character of Lu is perhaps the most strikingly destabilized identity of the novel, offering the reader very little in the way of fixed markers. Pronouns vary depending on the speaker, name spelling switches abruptly between Lu and Lou, and their internal monologue is peppered with synesthesia. Guesses could be made about what terms might fit Lu, but the novel never makes any attempt to tell the reader anything for certain. As before, Negative Space has no interest in reaching a settled state. Just as the teenage protagonists never seem to reach the stability promised by adulthood, Lu’s identity spirals outwards, becoming ever more unconstrained as the story plays out.


Negative Space is difficult to talk about. It resists description, just like its characters.

You can experience Negative Space for yourself by purchasing the book through our website.

Mother of Moomin: The Quiet, Compelling Life of Queer Author Tove Jansson

 

Her father was a sculptor. Her mother designed Finland’s stamps and banknotes. Her partner was a world-class designer. At fifteen, she published her first illustrations. At nineteen, a picture book. Her most famous creation -- the Moomintroll -- first appeared in an anti-fascist magazine. Her name was Tove Jansson. To her, I owe a lifetime love of literature.

Childhood was a gruesome time. I shed baby teeth, with only bloody gaps left behind. Knees bruised during games on pavement, bones ached with growth, a language barrier blocked conversations. The young brain needs a break from constant learning and adjusting, and where better to mentally vacation than Moominland, the fictional universe Tove Jansson’s Moomin family calls home?

The Moomins -- white, bipedal, hippo-like -- offered their creator solace too. Jansson’s life had hit a turbulent point: World War II ravaged Europe, and she struggled with a massive, personal art project after a disappointing stint studying painting at the École des Beaux-Arts. From this chaos the Moomins’ world emerged . Jansson wrote to a friend: “when I was feeling depressed and scared of the bombing and wanted to get away from my gloomy thoughts to something else entirely. . . . I crept into an unbelievable world where everything was natural and benign—and possible.”

   

Jansson was a novelist, and an author of short stories, but the Moomins remain her best known, and arguably best-loved, work. How could they not be? Consider the handsome fellow on the left, the titular character “Moomintroll,” who, according to MoominWiki is "very kind and well-meaning, however, he is rather emotional and tends to be sad or worried a lot.” Such lovable personalities garnered the Moomins fame all over the globe, with theme parks in Japan and Finland, an interactive playroom in the U.S., stores in China and Hong Kong, cafes in Thailand and South Korea, theatrical and anime adaptations, and many, many copies of her books sold.

For all of her fame, it took twenty-two years and a well-timed Instagram post for me to learn Jansson was queer. She was sandwiched between Arnold Lobel (of Frog and Toad fame) and Tomie dePaola (Strega Nona) on a list of queer children’s authors. At a time when book bans streak schools and libraries with red tape, with gorgeous books about LGBTQIA+ characters discarded, it seems particularly important that the identities of queer children's authors are acknowledged and celebrated.

Jansson had male and female partners in her life, but in 1956 she met the woman she’d spend the rest of her life with: Tuulikki Pietilä. Pietilä was, according to Wikipedia, “one of Finland's most influential graphic artists.” The women built a house on a remote island, Klovharu, in the Pellinki archipelago. There, they spent more than thirty peaceful summers. A documentary , “Haru, Island of the Solitary,” is spliced together from twenty hours of film footage recorded by Pietilä of their time together. The stills speak for themselves: a celebration of tranquility, nature,and love. Certainly, only a person this beautiful could have created so enduring a work of art, loved by both children, and children-all-grown-up.

To purchase Tove Jansson's (adult) novel from us: https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9781590172681

 

And to (re)connect with the Moomins, we offer:

Comet in Moominland (Moomins #1): https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9780312608880

Finn Family Moomintroll (Moomins #2): https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9780312608897

Moomin and the Spring Surprise: https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9781915801050

The Moomin ABC: https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9781915801067

The Moomin 123: https://eagleeyebooks.com/book/9781915801074