About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
WINNER, Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Lambda Literary Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction
Finalist, Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a thirty-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy receives an unexpected phone call from a distant family friend with a startling secret: Wendy's Opa (grandfather) -- a devout Mennonite farmer -- might have been transgender himself. At first she dismisses this revelation, but as Wendy's life grows increasingly volatile, she finds herself aching for the lost pieces of her Opa's truth. Can Wendy unravel the mystery of her grandfather's world and reckon with the culture that both shaped and rejected her? She's determined to try.
Alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate and mirthful, Little Fish explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined.
Awards
- Winner, Lambda Literary Award
- Short-listed, Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers
- Short-listed, Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award
- Winner, Amazon Canada First Novel Award
- Winner, Firecracker Award for Fiction
Editorial Reviews
Little Fish is ultimately not about the past but about the present -- and looking forward to trans futures ... A friend recently told me that one of the things she appreciates about Plett's work is how she so clearly writes for trans women. But the novel also deserves a wide audience. Every reader can get this part: being a trans woman is exhausting. -The Globe and Mail
I have never felt as seen, understood, or spoken to as I did when I read Little Fish. Never before in my life. Casey remains one of THE authors to read if you want to understand the interior lives of trans women in this century. -Meredith Russo, author of If I Was Your Girl
Plett has captured the multitude of emotions and decisions that can overwhelm our lives, from loneliness and self-destruction to the redemptive power of family and self-love. -The Advocate ("Best Books of the Year")
It's a confident, moving work that reports unflinchingly on the lives of trans women in Winnipeg. But more than that, it's also an honest and heartbreaking, and sometimes funny, look at a group of friends trying to come to terms with themselves and their world ... Little Fish is a powerful and important debut. Plett has masterfully painted her characters as both deeply complex and relatable. -National Post
Rather than downplaying transness in some effort to normalize or simplify it, Plett centres it ... While she acknowledges the absolute uniqueness of individual experience, she also honours a loosely held trans culture, a shared palette of pain and loss, and a collective heroism (though the author herself might be reticent to call it that). For those of us outside this experience, we can only count ourselves lucky to have Plett's novel, a book that invites us to witness something so important, so complex, and so tender. -Quill and Quire (STARRED REVIEW)
A hard-hitting, beautiful, and thought-provoking novel ... It will break you, and build you back up. -Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian
A touching and beautiful novel. -The Independent (UK)
There is a dark place most novels don't touch. If you've ever been there, maybe you know how exhilarating it can be to read a book like this, a book that captures the darkness so honestly, so accurately, that you can finally begin to let it go. Fearless and messy and oozing with love, Little Fish is a devastating book that I don't ever want to be without.
-Zoey Leigh Peterson, author of Next Year, For Sure
