Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I finished Kyle Lukoff’s Too Bright to See more than a week ago–possibly more than two?–and I’ve been debating how to write and structure this review ever since. While Lukoff’s novel has moments of brilliant writing, this story didn’t work for me, for multiple reasons; for lack of any better ideas after days (weeks?) of considering, I’m going to make a list of those reasons as the main portion of my review.

1)Uncle Roderick. His living self is portrayed as tirelessly loving and supportive, which makes sense from Bug’s perspective as a child mourning a recently dead loved adult, but his ghost presence is creepy, pushy, and scary. My parental instincts screamed as this ghost put Bug into uncomfortable and not-completely-safe situations MORE THAN ONCE.
2)The treatment of the “inner narrator” idea. As a child, I constantly narrated my day-to-day life in my head, whether to spruce up (or hurry along) a tedious task or just to tell the story of my life in a more exciting way. There were frequently “monsters” (or other undefined bad guys) to be vanquished (or appeased) by my setting the table neatly in a timely fashion, not to mention a dramatic flair to my inner descriptions of how and where I rode my bike. Imagining oneself as a fictional character seems completely normal to me, and I don’t see how it would magically stop because Bug came out as trans; I can’t see how gender transforms experiences like wandering in the woods (or setting the table).
3)Dancing around the name on Bug’s birth certificate. Referring to a first name as part of the plot but refusing to reveal it was irritating when Daphne du Maurier did it in Rebecca; it still is.
4)And while we’re on the subject of names, on the first day of school everyone calls the main character Bug, and–I quote, with emphasis added–“nobody laughs or comments on my name.” Who is this book FOR? Because no kid actually starting middle school is going to buy that, and if a book feels like a fairy tale, are the intended readers going to get out of it what the author likely wants them to?
5)Potentially ignored sensory issues and/or autism spectrum tendencies, because there were possible indications of both.
6)Partly because of that, Bug’s “I’m a boy” coming twenty pages after “…I don’t think that I am a boy. I don’t feel like a boy that everyone thinks is a girl” is a jump that doesn’t make sense to me. And here’s a spoiler alert, so feel free to skip to the “Note” below if you want to–an adult ghost forcing a child to cut off all its hair in the middle of the night seems to me to be an abusive violation of that child’s bodily autonomy. (It’s not a “joint” act if one is an adult and the other a child and there has been no plan, discussion, or consent.) Lukoff treats this act as the revelatory moment, the catalyst that begins the rest of Bug’s life, and I can’t get past the fact that IT WAS NOT OKAY.
Note: This 7th reason is going to relate to my personal beliefs; I will do my best to be courteous and respectful, and I expect any readers who choose to comment to do the same.
7)I believe that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose”, and I believe that (presupposing a body to be free of significant medical abnormalities) gender is determined by biological sex. My husband is a man who loves football, enjoys Broadway musicals, and crochets; I am a woman who loves books, history, and puzzles. (Also the Oxford comma, because everyone should.) I have given birth, but my husband loves babies and small children more than I ever will. I believe that I am myself, with all my traits and characteristics, and that self is female because I am female. I don’t believe clothing and haircut choices (when they ARE choices), hobbies, friends, or other preferences change who you are.

Ultimately, Too Bright to See made me deeply uncomfortable. Uncle Roderick’s ghost did not encourage Bug towards self-discovery; instead, it pushed Bug in the direction of its own agenda. (To clarify, I’m using “it” for the ghost because “he” would refer to the living man as portrayed in Bug’s occasional flashbacks.) I would love to feel the presence of my deceased relatives encouraging me to embrace and love myself as I am; a ghost that invades an 11-year-old’s dreams in order to alter the child’s body is not a presence I ever need in my life.