Passing strange

3.5 out of 5 stars – see this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

Passing Strange is a story of love and friendship among six women in 1940s San Francisco. Author Ellen Klages employs elegant prose, a straightforward plot, and a splash of magic to construct this beautiful and well-told story. Everything here works well, but nothing about it blew me away. That being said, I would read an entire book of Klages describing pastries!

A wonderful love story and a nice evocation of 1940s San Fransisco, a place of real magic with its steep streets, delicious restaurants, the chaos of Chinatown, and just off the coast: Treasure Island, home of the ‘39 World Fair. A troubled place also, where the immigrant and queer communities are under constant threat and the only small way they can express themselves is under the voyeuristic gaze of uncouth tourists.

I wish the fantastical element was left maybe a bit more ambiguous but otherwise this was a great novella.