Episode 022: Felix Ever After
“Felix Love has never been in love - and, yes, he's painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it's like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What's worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he's one marginalisation too many - Black, queer and transgender - to ever get his own happily-ever-after.
When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages - after publicly posting Felix's deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned - Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn't count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi-love triangle . . .
But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.”
The author is a black, queer, trans individual whose pronouns are they/them and he/him. Callender actually debuted their new name when announcing this very book in May 2019.
This week we are reviewing “Felix Ever After” by Kacen Callender, a book in which teenager Felix is receiving transphobic messages, goes seeking revenge, and ends up in a quasi-love triangle. As November is host to Trans Awareness Week, Trans Day of Remembrance, and Trans Parent Day, it is only appropriate that we spend each episode this month boosting more representative of our trans siblings.
You can either listen to the podcast above, or you can read below for a majority of the transcript of the podcast! Now as always, our discussion will begin with a brief summary of the book followed by spoiler free thoughts and feelings. This will be followed by an in-depth discussion of some of the key plot points that occurred and we will then finish off with my overall rating of the book and a heads up about what we are looking at next time. If you have not had a chance to read Felix Ever After and don’t want to hear any spoilers, then please feel free to skip the detailed section and listen to it afterwards if you so wish.
The story is told through first person as we go through Felix’s perspective as he deals with issues around falling in love with people, realising his own self-worth, and managing their intersectional identities. It’s actually quite an interesting promise to try and look at all these different aspects of Felix as a person within the one novel, and it really makes for some interesting character development as they wrestle with different aspects of what makes them themselves. And the other characters around Felix also have their own complexities, which do get explored throughout their journey, and so the characters involved are quite engaging rather than any of them appearing as one-note.
The story itself has several themes it seeks to cover, all of which seem to be handled quite well. There is the obvious narrative of finding out who has sought to be the vile individual that publicly outed Felix’s old self as well as sending transphobic hate, but as well as this there is the examination of microaggressions we face from loved ones, dealing with abandonment from people close in our lives, and learning how to love and respect oneself. It’s actually an interesting story to examine all these threads, as we know these will all be interconnected and so we can only really process a lot of the trauma we face in life with a holistic approach on multiple fronts. I applaud the author for recognising this and making sure there was enough space to deal with all these topics throughout the book.
In terms of representation, I feel there is an amazing choice made here to really present the fact that some people in the queer community will have more than one aspect of their personalities that counts as marginalised. I think we can all forget sometimes that there can be multiple aspects of someone’s authentic self that can compound the challenges they face in life and so it's a great reminder that although some of us might only have to face adversity for one aspect of who we are, this will not be the same for everyone and some of us have to face several challenges to live our authentic lives. Again it just reminds us, everyone’s journey will be unique to them.
Final little comment in the spoiler free section, the design of this book is really lovely! The page leaves have all been coloured so that when closed, the pages look like colourful leaves both from the side and top & bottom. It’s a really nice feature that actually makes me wish I could have the spine facing inwards on my shelf so I can see that pretty artwork each time!
Final Feelings and Recommendation
Now who should go out and get a copy of this book? Well I would say it's a great novel for anyone to read, but especially anyone who has been dealing with their own self doubts about if they are enough. And if you are a fan of coming of age narratives or stories of people finally realising their feelings for each other, again this is definitely one worth recommending.
In terms of rating, I am going to give this novel a solid 7 self portraits done in love out of 10. It is a lovely story of finding the ability to love yourself and being enough as you are, as well as containing some key lessons on how best to support trans people by just accepting them as they are, since they know themselves better than you ever will.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Now, just a reminder that at this point, I will be going into a more detailed analysis of the book which means there will be spoilers! If you haven’t managed to read Felix Ever After yet and you don’t want anything spoiled, then this is your last chance to avoid the discussion. Or you can go ahead and close the page, go read the book and then come back afterwards to finish reading. I promise I won’t mind. Still here? Well then, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Our story starts with us meeting Felix, our 17 year old living in New York City near the end of their high school life and preparing to step out into the next part of their life. He is attending a summer programme at the elite art school, St. Catherines, along with a whole bunch of students to work on their college portfolios and during our introduction to the story, we get a feel for who he is as a person, meet his best friend Ezra, and get a glimpse into some of the challenges he is facing at home, with his peers, and his own internal struggles.
In our short glimpse into his life, we learn that his mother left the family when he was younger which Felix now processes by writing emails to her but never sending them, his father still struggles to respect who Felix is by frequently deadnaming or misgendering him, and having both parental figures in his life be this neglectful in their own ways has helped foster a lot of self-doubt and feelings of being worthless and unlovable. It really is a shame to see this for Felix and shows just how important having parents who are supportive can be in shoring up a person's mental health while they are growing up.
But it’s not long into the story before we are coming to St. Catherines and see that another student has used the gallery in the lobby, which is used throughout the year for student installations, to show personal pictures of Felix from before his transition. It seems someone managed to hack into Felix’s online account and access the private photos and has shared them along with his deadname. It’s such a horrendous act to carry out on someone to out a part of someone that no longer exists, and the fact that someone can actively choose to inflict that much trauma onto a person is just…absolutely vile. What’s even worse is the person then starts to send anonymous transphobic messages to Felix through his instagram account. Absolutely disgusting!
Once they get to class after Felix has had time to deal with the trauma just inflicted on them, it's here that after some less than great interactions with Declan and other classmates, that he lets Ezra know he suspects this was the work of Declan. They had just had a dispute the day before, and ever since Ezra and Declan broke-up he has seemed to have it in for the pair.
Now we get the super teenage minded plan of trying to get a secret out of Declan, and Felix is going to do this with a fake instagram account under the name Lucky. During this process, Felix learns Declan wasn’t responsible for the gallery and the two actually start to bond while they converse about art and eventually express vulnerability to each other in their discussions. At some point Felix even asks about his breakup with Ezra, to which he learns Declan always felt that Ezra was in love with Felix and couldn’t compete, nor would it have been fair on Declan to always be in that position, so I can fully appreciate why the relationship between them didn’t work out.
Throughout the story we also deal with the fact that Felix’s dad still seems resistant to fully recognise Felix’s true self, as there are several instances of Felix being deadnamed or their dad misgendering him. It’s obviously very disappointing and upsetting for Felix to deal with, as they have to deal with not just the outside world challenging them on who they are at times, but also having that happen at home, meaning there can feel like no real safe space. It’s something that eventually reaches a boiling point during the story, in which Felix stops telling himself he should let it slide as his father has done so many other things to support him in living his authentic life.
When he confronts his father, he finally highlights how all these microaggressions affect him to truly show how much these words can hurt. And during their discussion they also discuss the failed marriage to Felix’s mom and how it can be easier to love someone who won’t love you back and sometimes putting that energy into chasing them is easier than accepting healthy love from another. It is through this conversation that Felix can also start to process that their mother isn’t in their lives, and that does not reflect on his worthiness of being loved.
Another struggle for Felix is Marisol, a girl they dated for about 2 weeks before she ended it with him. She has the very transphobic opinion that Felix is a misogynist for ‘choosing’ to be a guy, failing to realise that 1, it’s not a choice, and 2, being male doesn’t automatically make you a misogynist. She would clearly fit in with some other ‘feminists’ with highly toxic ideologies. The worst part being that for a long time, this does get to Felix as although he knows this is transphobic, these comments further add to his thoughts that all his identities make him hard to love, which is such bullshit. He eventually does call out her behaviour and makes a stand for himself as he becomes more confident and full of self-respect.
During the story, Felix starts to have questions around his identity as a trans male which starts to leave him feeling paralysed, as how can he possibly go through with coming out to everyone all over again. He finds a gender identity discussion group nearby which helps him to process these feelings while also utilising the internet to research trans terminology. Eventually he finds the word demiboy, which is a person who feels their gender identity partially identifies with a masculine identity but is not wholly binary, and this word actually feels like the correct one to him. It’s a great example of how finding the right label does really help with some people and that the internet is not just full of nasty trolls, sometimes it does help us learn and understand ourselves better.
As Felix comes to this realisation, he feels confident enough to share a selfie with the world with the declaration he is a demiboy, but accidentally shares this to Lucky’s account. Although he swiftly deletes it, Declan has seen it and is understandably hurt and mad that Felix has deceived him like this. I mean, the guy has essentially been cat fished and this can have such an impact on people’s mental health, so I fully side with him feeling how he does with this revelation. Especially since both boys had talked about potentially falling for the other, and it seems like a really cruel toying with people's emotions.
But since they do have some feelings for each other, Declan does invite Felix to come upstate with him once he has had time to process the shocking revelation. It is just for a weekend but it will be the first time they spend time together and are honest about who they are with one another. It is here that Felix comes to realise that he is in love with Ezra and has been subconsciously rejecting it since it would be a healthy & intense love which he wasn’t in a space to accept, and so Declan is left slightly heartbroken but there is the prospect of friendship between the two.
Eventually Felix learns that the person responsible for the gallery and the hateful messages has been Austin, the boy he has been dating Ezra for some of this book before they broke up. He confronts him on why he has done this, where he claims it was an accident and that he was just trying to get at Felix for flaunting his trans identity all the time. Felix calls BS on this, since he isn’t flaunting anything at all, he is just existing! It seems to be a key lesson people need at the moment with the amount of vitriol the trans community faces just for having the nerve to exist. And it goes without saying that Austin gets expelled for his horrendous behaviour which is how it should always be.
On the day of the Pride parade, Felix goes to find Ezra and admit to him how he truly feels about him. Although there are some issues on the day, such as being stuck on the other side of the barrier, eventually our two boys meet and it is here that Felix admits how he feels. This is quite the development from where Felix started the story, claiming the parade would be too much for them since it can be quite emotional for people with the people screaming and crying when he was asked to go by Ezra, and also acts as its own declaration of love.
The two boys then go back to Felix’s and it is here where Felix also opens up about the term demiboy and how that sits better with him. Of course Ezra is fully accepting and it's such a sweet romance we get to see starting to bloom between the two. It really helps to showcase that sometimes we can be so focused on finding love and acceptance from others, that we sometimes miss just how in front of our face it is to start with.
In the climax of the book, the end of summer gallery student who will show their work on the gallery wall is chosen and the teachers of St. Catherines have unanimously decided on Felix’s submission of his self-portraits! It’s a really positive development for Felix as it allows them to reclaim a space that was a massive source of trauma at the start of the story but it can now serve as a testament to their growth and creative skill. I think it was very clever of the author to make sure there was a set piece to the story that could be used at the start and end of the story to show that internal (as well as external) growth while also showing how individuals can claim back spaces with something as powerful as self-love. It’s a great way to finish the book along with seeing Ezra and Felix starting out on their relationship and Felix accepting that if he doesn’t make it into his university of choice, he is still worthy of love and respect.