Notes from a Regicide

Fellman (The Two Doctors Gorski) paints an intimate and vivid portrait of a queer family weathering a dystopian world in this triumphant sci-fi novel. Some thousand years in the future, New York City journalist Griffon Keming mourns his late adoptive parents, Zaffre and Etoine, who took him in when he was a closeted 15-year-old escaping abuse. After he unearths a memoir that Etoine left behind, “Autoportrait, Blessé” (“Self-Portrait, Injured”), written decades earlier from the jail cell where he waited to be hanged for regicide (a hanging which didn’t happen), Griffon attempts to reconcile his recollections of his parents with the life he didn’t know they lived before they adopted him. Etoine and Zaffre, both trans, were artists, refugees, and revolutionaries from the city-state of Stephensport, now a dictatorship. Alternating perspectives between Griffon and Etoine, the narrative slowly untangles the history of this found family. Throughout, Fellman explores themes of political dissidence and the power and limitations of art, especially as a means of giving voice to the oppressed. Prescient, emotionally nuanced, and remarkably well told, this offers plenty to sink one’s teeth into. Agent: Kate McKean, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Apr.)