Herculine: A Novel

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A paranoid, self-annihilating (Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo) horror debut following a woman who seeks refuge at an all-trans girl commune only to discover that demons haunt her fellow comradesand she's their next prey!

Herculines narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob storyconversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exesbut she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any shes ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.

The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrators growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isnt quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.

While trying to untangle the communes many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they wont be letting her go.

Reviews

"Truly wonderful. While the world falls apart, reading horror is like anti-venom, a small offering of poison to counteract a greater poison that seeks to destroy you.
Lilly Wachowski, co-creator ofThe MatrixandSense8

"Visceral and hypnotic, a novel with stars in its guts.It takes place both in the wilderness and in the new future we are trying to build."
Patricia Lockwood, author ofPriestdaddyandNo One Is Talking About This

"Wildly surprising, slyly funny, and in all ways an excellent novel. Whether or not youve ever made a compact with a demon for the thing you wanted most, Grace Byrons Herculine is the real deal."
Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

"Byron's debut isa haunting portrait of disaffected, dysfunctional adulthoodand the human devastation left behind by fundamentalist Christian upbringing. On its face,Herculineis an almost prototypical novel about a young trans woman trying to make it in New York, but with each new nasty revelation, Byron pulls you deeper intoa world of paranoid, self-annihilating horror."
Gretchen Felker-Martin, author ofManhuntandCuckoo

"Grace Byron'sliterally unforgettableHerculinepulses with surprise, intelligence, and tension. Here we have a novel of the mind and heart alike, a trans horror story of marooning and discovery thatcan make the reader both shudder andlaugh out loud, andthe arrival of a major new voice."
Sarah Thankam Mathews, author ofAll This Could Be Different

"Provocative and poetic.Herculineevokes the tradition ofgrungy queer lit, decked out with infernal styleand slick with the poison of isolation."
Hailey Piper, author ofA Game in Yellow

Like Byron herself, Herculines protagonist, an aspiring writer who looks up to the Hot Freelance Girls (her nickname for the trans women writers who enjoyed a brief window of upward mobility back in the Buzzfeed and Jezebel days, when Representation Mattered), lives in the shadow of the now-defunct Topside Press literary scene, of which Torrey [Peters] is perhaps the best-known member. Though it deals in demons rather than vaccines, Herculine shares with Infect [Your Friends and Loved Ones] cult dynamics contrasted with the sad suspicion that T4T isnt the nostrum that some would have us believe.
Davey Davis, author of X

I devoured Herculinea sharp, fast-paced nightmare glittering with insight about desire, trauma, and the unique joys and disappointments of t4t intimacy. In a literary landscape long-plagued by bloodless depictions of contemporary transsexual life, Herculinesplashes onto the scene sparkling red and wreathed in viscera.
Max Delsohn, author of Crawl

"Note perfect, not a line or scene out of place. Nothing belabored or overstated. Atmospherically dense and absorbing. Very funny. Hot. Terrifying, powerful."
Anahid Nersessian, author of Keat'sOdes: A Lover's Discourse

Author Bio

Grace Byron is a writer from the Midwest based in Queens. Her writing has appeared inThe Cut, Bookforum, The Nation, LARB, Lux, Screen Slate, frieze, Hyperallergic, Joyland, The Believer, AnOther, andThe Baffleramong other outlets. She is a 2024 Queer Art Fellow and her story Validity has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.