Little Fish

A Novel

By: Casey Plett

Narrated by: A. Almeida

Winner, Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Lambda Literary Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction

Finalist, Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award

A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a 30-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy receives an unexpected phone call from a distant family friend with a startling secret: Wendy's Opa (grandfather) - a devout Mennonite farmer - might have been transgender himself. At first she dismisses this revelation, but as Wendy's life grows increasingly volatile, she finds herself aching for the lost pieces of her Opa's truth. Can Wendy unravel the mystery of her grandfather's world and reckon with the culture that both shaped and rejected her? She's determined to try.

Alternately warm-hearted and dark-spirited, desperate and mirthful, Little Fish explores the winter of discontent in the life of one transgender woman as her past and future become irrevocably entwined.

Bespeak Audio Editions brings Canadian voices to the world with audiobook editions of some of the country’s greatest works of literature, performed by Canadian actors.

©2018 Casey Plett (P)2020 ECW Press

Critic reviews

"Little Fish is ultimately not about the past but about the present - and looking forward to trans futures.... A friend recently told me that one of the things she appreciates about Plett's work is how she so clearly writes for trans women. But the novel also deserves a wide audience. Every reader can get this part: being a trans woman is exhausting." (The Globe and Mail)

"It’s a confident, moving work that reports unflinchingly on the lives of trans women in Winnipeg. But more than that, it’s also an honest and heartbreaking, and sometimes funny, look at a group of friends trying to come to terms with themselves and their world.... Little Fish is a powerful and important debut. Plett has masterfully painted her characters as both deeply complex and relatable." (National Post)

"Rather than downplaying transness in some effort to normalize or simplify it, Plett centres it.... While she acknowledges the absolute uniqueness of individual experience, she also honours a loosely held trans culture, a shared palette of pain and loss, and a collective heroism (though the author herself might be reticent to call it that). For those of us outside this experience, we can only count ourselves lucky to have Plett's novel, a book that invites us to witness something so important, so complex, and so tender." (Quill & Quire starred review)

A peak inside

I enjoyed reading Wendy’s story. It gave me insight and understanding into a world I never thought much about. Thank you for writing and sharing Ms. Plett.

I’ve read it twice now.

Once on paper and once on audiobook. Both times it left me in awe of how well it captured the nuances of my own trans experience while giving me some things to think about. The characters are vivid and the story is engaging throughout. I’m sure I’ll read it many more times.

Good book. Narrator needs work

The narrator needs to learn how to say toupee and GHB. Otherwise a great listen.