You probably won’t like Barbara, the narrator of Jordy Rosenberg’s incandescent new novel, “Night Night Fawn.” The transphobia, the misogyny, the classism, the obsession with physical appearance, the Zionism and the general shallowness make Barbara a difficult voice to spend time with. Eventually we also see some acts involving her child that are, at least for me, unforgivable – if they are not illegal. But she is also really funny, and often insightful. And sometimes the targets of her ire really deserve it. So Barbara can grow on you over time, though in a complicated way, and though I highly doubt you’ll ever come to like her, she is compelling and charismatic.
Barbara Rosenberg is dying. A self-described yenta, she is in the closing stages of a terminal cancer diagnosis and managing the pain of her final weeks with OxyContin. The book is composed of a memoir-style narration of Barbara’s life, punctuated by short scenes from her contemporary experiences and some additional materials at the end of that book that reverberate back through the text. Through much of the book, her primary caregiver is her child, Jordana. Jordana is a trans man, but Barbara aggressively rejects the fact of Jordana’s gender and transition, always describing her child as her “daughter” and a “lesbian,” and almost always in the context of how disappointed she is that Jordana never married a man and supplied her with grandchildren. At one point Barbara even hallucinates or dreams that Jordana transforms into a terrifying birdlike creature that flies into her room and attacks her. From then on, she refers only to “the bird.”
After it became clear that, despite getting into an exclusive school for the performing arts, Barbara would never be a Hollywood star, her life goal was as basic as possible: plenty of money and grandchildren. But this dream also fizzles because the man she’s tagged as her partner in this project decides to work in public health instead of a more lucrative private practice, and her only child does not have children.
Perhaps the most impressive narrative feat in the book is Rosenberg’s pacing. If there is nothing redeemable about Barbara, readers will tune her out and, even if they keep reading, miss the many insights her character has to offer – such as the direct line between experiencing misogyny and expressing transphobia. Make her too sympathetic and the significance and cruelty of her bigotry and Zionism is dulled. Rosenberg further complicates this back and forth by showing that Barbara is a manipulator. A trained actor, Barbara is very conscious of the power of words in general and her particular talent with them, at one point giving a very detailed explanation of the power dynamics at play with her phone greeting as a receptionist for a plastic surgeon. Furthermore, her only friend, Sugar, is a writer, adding another layer to Barbara’s relationship to words and communication. So are we also being manipulated when we feel our sympathy growing for her? And since we’re talking about a novel, is there anything but manipulation?
Whatever her talents for manipulation were able to secure for her over the course of her life, she dies alone in the same rent-controlled apartment she’d lived in for decades. To some readers, Barbara’s final moments will feel like some form of justice – too little and too late for Jordana, but in a world where so many “ordinary fascists” suffer no consequences whatsoever, it can feel refreshing. But I think Rosenberg is exploring ideas, experiences and significance outside or beyond ideas such as justice. What does it mean to laugh with someone like Barbara? What do we owe the worst people in our lives? Is there a path forward that is neither redemption nor revenge?
As with Rosenberg’s first novel, the absolutely brilliant “Confessions of the Fox,” “Night Night Fawn” has a twist that shakes the story to its foundations, unsettling our assumptions and conclusions and forcing us to question the nature of the story we’ve been reading. Even with that twist, the book’s fundamental question remains the same. How, in a world with such beautiful diversity, open opportunities and chances to explore and play and celebrate, do people end up with such small, closed-off, hateful ideas? There are big and small ways to answer that question, systems and personal responsibility, culture and propaganda, but for Rosenberg, it may all come down to the stories we tell and how we tell them. As tough as it can be to live in this world, I’m grateful to share it with Rosenberg’s stories.
Josh Cook is a bookseller and co-owner at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, where he has worked since 2004. He is also author of the critically acclaimed postmodern detective novel “An Exaggerated Murder” and “The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the 21st Century.” He has self-published the zine For White Dudes (Like Me) Who Have Not Considered Reading Trans Books. His fiction, criticism and poetry have appeared in numerous leading literary publications. He grew up in Lewiston, Maine, and lives in Somerville. If you’d like to read more about books, subscribe to his newsletter Yesterday Today Tomorrow Forever.
A version of this story appeared originally on the Porter Square Review of Books. Buy “Night Night Fawn” from Porter Square Books.
