A Rotten Girl
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"Pearl is a trans woman writer on the cusp of literary greatness... or so she thought until her agent informs her that her first books has sunken like a stone for its failure to 'connect with normal people'. Normal people. Heterosexual people. Cisgender people. Jaded from the knowledge that this industry rarely lets in people like her, Pearl comes up with a plan: write a commercial male/male romance. Except the market's all about authenticity these days, isn't it? The plan gets complicated, drawing her into a web of escalating deceptions where she poses as a cisgender gay man and comes ever closer to destroying all her relationships, and her own life. Combining Yellowface and the messiness of Detransition Baby, A Rotten Girl is a satirical drama that explores gender, public personas, the commodification of queerness-and the reality of what it is like to be a trans woman in a hostile world."--Back cover
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Satire about marginalized books isn't exactly new, and in many ways A Rotten Girl almost feels inevitable. But Topaz does an excellent job setting this story apart. Pearl is a trans woman who, in an attempt to achieve mainstream success, poses as a cisgender gay man to write a trashy M/M romance targeted at straight women. She's a fairly unlikeable protagonist, willing to go to extreme lengths at the expense of her gay trans roommate Pippin and her girlfriend Barbs, but her motivations are ultimately fairly relatable.
It helps that the writing is consistently a blast: relentlessly quotable, with nearly every single paragraph having at least one standout line. From exerpts from Pearl's novel, to pointed (and fairly) accurate depictions of the horrors of being an online trans woman, Topaz's writing is incredibly sharp, balancing both humor and commentary excellently.
My only major complaint is that some character development, particularly in regards to Pearl's relationship with Barbs, felt a little rushed and contrived. I would have loved to see more justification for Pearl's decision not to be upfront with both Barbs and Pippin, and neither characters' relationship with Pearl felt like it ended on a satisfying note.
A Rotten Girl is an absolute blast to read. But more than that, it's an excellently written piece of satire, that manages to cram quite a bit of layered commentary into a short (but sweet) package. Definitely worth a read, I loved this one quite a bit.
