Let me not bury the lede: HERCULINE is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
I was always going to read HERCULINE, out October 7th, because I’ll read anything Grace Byron writes. That said, I’ll be candid enough to admit that I didn’t know what to expect when I saw it billed as horror. I’ve followed Grace for her clear-eyed criticism, which has its feet firmly planted in reality. How wrong I was to think this novel would be anything different.
HERCULINE is a story about an unnamed narrator who flees NYC after being haunted by a deep, demonic evil. Her destination? A rural, all-trans girl commune in Indiana called Herculine, which was founded by her favorite ex-girlfriend. Initially soothed by the escape, the narrator begins to notice that some things are amiss at Herculine. Could she really leave her demons behind?
What strikes you most about HERCULINE is how rooted in reality it feels. Grace brings you along for the ride masterfully, with every scene rooted in delicious, relatable detail. You can smell the pines. This book is an instant classic. I can’t wait to read it again and again.
In this interview, Grace and I chatted about the Midwest, growing up Christian, and what we owe our past selves.
You can pre-order HERCULINE here - or from your local indie bookstore!
CF: I read this book in central Oregon, with nothing but hot, red desert and brittle sage for miles. In many ways, this was the perfect setting to read HERCULINE. On the commune, the isolation of your narrator becomes a character in itself. At least from my perspective, you’re known as an NYC girl about town, although you hail from the Midwest. What drew you to a narrative of middle-of-nowhereness?
GB: That’s a perfect setting for Herculine. It makes me think of Ursula K Le Guin’s essay on the lynx. There’s something about nature that can be revealing. It’s always striking to see the difference between perception and reality–I feel like I rarely leave my apartment, but I probably leave the house more often than I imagine. Still, I’m often a homebody. Which gives plenty of time to muse on the past. I certainly talk a lot of shit about the Midwest, but I’m from the Midwest so I’m allowed. Like a bad boyfriend, only you can say the worst things. Others have yet to date him, so they should tread carefully. Let you sort things out. I miss Indiana sometimes and there’s plenty of good things about it too, I think in some ways the book is reflecting on that homesickness–but also the fact that you can never go home twice. There’s always a price. On a craft level, I was terrified of writing a NYC novel. There’s too many of them. So while some of the novel is set there, I felt it was important to have a twist.
CF: We learn a lot about your narrator. The first-person you create is so embodied – we know her thoughts on food, literature, men, women, NYU, Bolaño. Why withhold her name?
GB: I suppose she could be anyone that way. A vessel, an eyeball, a vehicle. But the truth is after a while it felt inorganic to give her a name. She is simply the Narrator.
CF: Early in the novel, you talk about closeted girlhood, and you ask a question which has stuck with me ever since I read HERCULINE. You write, “How old do you have to be to confront your childhood?” How much of this novel is about that question?
GB: Oh absolutely. That’s such a large part of the book. I think the book is about two things–the confrontation with past trauma and the subsequent desire for (and wound of) community. Those questions are interconnected. How much are you willing to give up to be loyal to a group? That’s nationalism on a very minor scale and is intimately connected to the ways in which we are wounded as kids. That’s how attachment style works. What would you give up to belong? In some ways, that’s how cults operate. I think childhood is very bound up with the surface level and subterranean elements of the book.
CF: I feel like autofiction is very in-vogue in queer fiction milieu right now (no shade, I, myself, write autofiction). This book, in many ways, rejects that premise (unless, of course, you have some firsthand experiences with the demonic that you would like to get into). Why did you choose speculative horror? Has your writing always tended toward the fantastical?
GB: That’s nice to hear. I took a class with Tony Tulathimutte where Carmen Maria Machado came in and talked about a short story she wrote called “The Tour” that she described as speculative autofiction. I’m not sure that’s exactly what Herculine is doing but I’m sure that concept influenced me. I think the only way to write this book was to play with the things that were “real.” In order to confront them, I had to remix them, to shift them around. That’s the alchemy of fiction. To stretch, to play, to confront, to maximize, to minimalize. But yes, I grew up Christian so I grew up in a community that believed in demons. I always loved fantasy. When I was young I wrote more straightforward horrible Christian fantasy that ripped off Eragon or Lord of the Rings. I wrote a long book called “The Whimsical Chariot.” I read and reread Narnia and A Wrinkle in Time. But only in the past few years have I revisited the fantastical as a genre in which to write. I’m sure Le Guin and Machado were big parts of that.
CF: For the first portion of the book, it’s almost unclear if the demons are metaphorical manifestations of your character’s trauma, versus actual satanic forces. Was this an intentional ambiguity? How did you go about crafting the suspense as the situation becomes more urgent?
GB: I think it was. I think there’s a question of when and how the narrator is able to confront her demons and trauma. I think crafting the arc was part of many rewrites. When and how to angle that arc was work my editor Sareena Kamath and agent Julia Masnik were both instrumental in.
CF: Your level of detail - whether Latin incantations or mythology - is delectable. I’m so curious - what was your research process like for this book? Is this sort of mythology an interest of yours, or did it come to you in tandem with the story of HERCULINE?
Oh I was so versed in this as a kid. It was my pet interest. Greek mythology, demonology. I also (briefly) took Latin classes in high school because I had to. I have no knack for the stuff but myth is burned into my brain–as is Christian esoterica. I loved the tv show Evil that recently came to a close on CBS.
CF: You’re well-known for your incredible criticism, and rightly so. I’m so curious - how do you kill the critic in your head while you’re writing? Is it hard to relax those muscles as you write fiction?
GB: Thank you so much. I think it was easier for the first book, to be honest. I had less of a roadmap. Now I’m terrified in some ways because I know the whole process that is to come. I think the only way I was able to write Herculine was to turn off the should’s. A lot of writing a book is realizing the book you “don’t want to write” is the one you have to write.
CF: So often, trans fiction places a trans character in isolation, rather than in community with other trans characters. HERCULINE is the antithesis; on the commune, there is nary a cis-het in sight. Despite all that happens, are we meant to see HERCULINE as a utopia? Do you?
GB: I think that’s ultimately a question for the reader. It’s a gauntlet. I think the narrator certainly has her opinion–but coming to that is the plot of the book. I suppose that’s a cop-out. I think there are real reasons to be cynical about separatism and also very real reasons to invest in trans/queer community.
CF: I started They Read Book to demonstrate a queer and trans reading practice, and to show that queer and trans literature isn’t ‘marginal’ or ‘niche.’ Tell me about some queer and trans literature that has been meaningful, formative, magical, challenging, to you.
GB: I owe a lot to Gretchen Felker-Martin’s “Manhunt” and of course to the work of Torrey Peters, both in this book and across my career. The work of Andrea Long Chu. A very truncated list of friends, thinkers, and interlocutors: Bryn Kelly, Harron Walker, Jamie Hood, Kaveh Akbar, Sarah Thankam Mathews, Imogen Binnie, Cecilia Gentili, K Patrick, Zefyr Lisowski, Shola von Reinhold, Pippa Garner, Audre Lorde, Hannah Baer, Cyrus Dunham, Jules Gill-Peterson, Lauren Cook, Emily Zhou, Casey Plett, Kate Bornstein, Valerie Solanas, Sarah Fonseca, Carmen Maria Machado, Max Delsohn, Davey Davis, Tourmaline. Though I think often when thinking of inspirations I just incorporate those influences into the same list as the “cis” literature. So I had to parse through. There’s so many people who are doing such good writing. I will say two of my favorite novels this year were not queer in any formal or literal sense— “Hothouse Bloom” by Austyn Wohlers and “Information Age” by Cora Lewis.
CF: Inspired by 2000s blogs, I offer each author the chance to ask a question to the next They Read Book interviewee. What would you like to ask the next author?
GB: How do you approach writing (or not writing) about sex?
CF: A question for you, from Benedict Nguyễn (read her interview!): what’s a (not necessarily ‘the’) favorite sentence from your own work?
GB: I love Benedict’s work! Everyone go buy Hot Girls with Balls. From Herculine: “God, our heavenly landlord, isn’t the nicest man either.”