Aggregated Discontent: Confessions of the Last Normal Woman

Essayist Walker debuts with a sharp collection of cultural criticism focused largely on trans issues. Combining omnivorous pop culture references, rigorous reporting, and a winning, tongue-in-cheek tone, Walker profiles such figures as artist Greer Lankton and activist Cecilia Gentili, unpacks trans women’s complicated relationships to misogyny, and tells the story of her grandmother, who routinely sold ostensibly cis male clients articles of women’s clothing at a department store in midcentury Connecticut. The pièce de résistance is “What’s New and Different?” which covers Walker’s often humiliating experiences covering trans issues for various magazines, then morphs into a hybrid of fan fiction and film criticism that pulls from The Devil Wears Prada, The Intern, and Working Girl to reflect on the limitations of so-called “girlboss feminism.” A few essays struggle to wrangle Walker’s wide-ranging thoughts into tidy takeaways in their final paragraphs, and a handful of her analyses feel somewhat predigested. For the most part, though, she’s a remarkably lucid and arresting narrator, equally willing to joke about “the traumatized core whence all personal essay fodder springs eternal” and to lay her own insecurities bare. The result is a kaleidoscopic consideration of 21st-century trans life that announces Walker as a formidable talent. Agent: Connor Goldsmith, Fuse Literary. (May)