| Title | : | Roving Pack |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle , Hardcover , Paperback , Audiobook & More |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2012 |
Roving Pack Reviews
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I devoured Sassafras Lowrey’s debut novel, Roving Pack. (I pre-ordered, so I got it before the official October release.) I tried to savor it, but it was not a small bites book, not a go slow on the first read experience.
The prose is achingly simple, stripped down and
transparent
, with an intensely compelling central character and a universe drawn in immense detail. The kind of prose I love. The kind of prose that makes me think—I can do that; writing doesn’t have to be fancy and confusing, it can be approachable, it can be real. The kind of prose that carries me away on the story.
I fell for Click and felt for Click—or rather, felt with Click. Sometimes so intensely it was too much, and I needed to put the book down for a bit. Click and I come from different cultural contexts, in so many ways. (Click exists in a straight-edge queer leather gutter punk community in PDX in the early 2000’s.) And, yet...some of this novel hit very close to home, reached into sore places for me. And it wasn’t gentle about it.
Roving Pack is precisely detailed in the way it weaves in some painful realities of queer leather life. For that in particular, it is so deeply needed, in so many ways. It gives you a visceral feel for very specific experiences that are not often discussed at all, much less there on the page in a novel that is steeped in the reality of them. It gets right to the gut of them, and so I’m going to speak from that gut as I write about it. I’m about to get specific about a few threads in the novel. So if you are the sort that avoids spoilers, stop reading now.
For us genderqueer folks who don’t fit the traditional trans narrative and are struggling with/against community norms, pressures and expectations around what makes you “legitimately” trans, us veterans of gender border wars…this book will break your heart in the ways it illuminates this reality. It left me in shards, not wrapped up nice and neat, not hopeful, but oh so raw, and that bold choice was so frustrating and real…and I’m not sure what I think of it yet. I will tell you that it sucked to leave Click in that moment. Beyond that, I’m still thinking about the way it ends, and don’t know where I will land on that.
For those of us who know what it’s like to want abusive and neglectful parents and family members to just leave you the fuck alone, and who grapple with the fear that comes from being stalked by those who were supposed to protect you but instead inflicted harm that still is unending with the stalking…this thread is woven very tightly into this book. It is part of the context, and part of the story, but doesn’t take center stage much of the time, in a way that I found eerily familiar. This aspect of the novel haunts me. Because that’s the reality of this experience; it is part of the every day, and then it flares up and takes over, and then it fades again into just part of life. If you know this experience, this thread may trigger the hell out of you. And it may feel like someone finally got it right, put it down the way it is. Probably both.
For those of us who came to leather so deeply hungry to submit and be wanted that our hunger drove our choices to some hard and traumatic places…this book savors the details of that experience, with all of its erotic charge and real danger, the intense vulnerability and need, and the exploitation, heartbreak, and abuse that can and often does happen in those circumstances. It illustrates how complicated abusive Ds dynamics can be, how much they can feel normal and even valued in kink communities, how intensely they can include love and desire. Click doesn’t simplify hir experiences with these two Daddies that left hir broken and orphaned. Ze insists we hold hir yearning and desire, hir pain and confusion, the way hir life and sense of self intertwined with both the care and the abuse ze experienced in these relationships. The boot shaped bruises on hir heart are bared for us to see in sharp detail, and they don’t let us distance ourselves from them in easy ways—we can’t just call it abuse and leave it at that. We are forced to hold the complexity.
It is this last thread that I am especially grateful for. Most writing about leather is how to, or intended to get you off. It is rare to see anything that focuses on leather relationships in the real world, and these are at the center of this novel, both Click’s relationships with hir Pack, as well as hir Daddies and casual lovers. I treasure that. But I particularly treasure the way that Lowrey unflinchingly describes the complexity of abusive and neglectful D/s relationships, from the inside, particularly Daddy dynamics with their specific intensity and play with identity and dependence.
I can only imagine how hard it was to write this. I know it was hard as fuck to read it. And. As a survivor of this kind of D/s relationship, it was invaluable to see it reflected in print in a real and complex way. It felt affirming to have this be part of Click’s reality, and have it be as big as it was, and yet not the whole story. Because that’s the thing about trauma—it is huge and ripples all the way through our lives, and it also is not the entirety of our lives, or our consciousness about them, it’s not the only priority or the only story, does not take over everything, even if it sometimes feels like it will.
We don’t talk about abuse in leather communities very often. I know, because I have felt the backlash and the desperate welcome that comes with being someone who does talk about it. It is so important to have these conversations from a complex and compassionate place, and Roving Pack is a vital voice in that endeavor.
In Roving Pack, Lowrey does what I need from queer literature; ze unflinchingly tells an insider story, one rife with specificity, that documents a very particular queer leather culture in a very particular setting. I am very glad that this book is out in the world, doing its essential work.
(cross posted on tumblr and LJ) -
Let me say this first: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK.
OK, now I can tell you -- I loathed reading it. It was thoroughly un-enjoyable to read. But you know what? So was Grapes of Wrath. Not every good book is a comfortable book. I think this is exactly what Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore means when she reviews Roving Pack this way: "I'm not sure that I've ever seen a book that explores the intoxication and viciousness of peer pressure in queer lives with such candor. Goddamn this book is brave -- I can't wait to see the havoc it wreaks."
I hated just about every character in this book: self-centered, selfish, self-absorbed and insecure. It's so frustrating to see people break out of one hegemonic system of boxes and labels only to land in an equally oppressive system under the guise of being "alternative" and not see that they still are not free to be their true selves. I waited PAGES AND PAGES for characters to make the right decision - the one that was honest and true. And they didn't. But it's real and true and often how things go. My history/path isn't the same as the narrator's but I experienced enough of the same people and peer pressure in my early 20s to have most of it resonate and to be nodding my head (and shaking my fist!) as I read along.
This may be my old cranky self talking but if I never see the words "hella" and "sick" again, I'm OK with that. -
Rough around the edges in the very, absolute best way. The conversational, epistolary form shines here, and the process of reading through Click’s entries quickly becomes inseparable from Click’s own becoming-trans. Lowrey does an incredible job navigating the relationship between kink, sexuality, and gender-crossing, and in doing so spotlights the lives of non-“respectable” queers, with moments both funny and heartbreaking.
It’s also an incredible peak into the west coast queer scene in the early aughts!!! -
After I’d read the last line of Roving Pack, I turned the page expectantly. I wanted more. I double-checked to make sure I hadn’t flipped two pages instead of one. I read the last paragraph again, then another time. I sat with it. It sat with me.
I feel a lot of empathy for Click’s situation. Being genderqueer is similar to being trans*, some of us even embrace trans as part of our identity. We often find kinship and camaraderie among trans folks. We can relate to feelings of gender dysphoria and the pain of not being seen for who we really are. However, for those of us who are gender non-binary, what we don’t have is a clear path to a well-recognized gender destination. There isn’t a sense of moving from point A to point B, because male and female are not necessarily our starting or endpoint. In following Click’s story, the day to day reality of being non-binary in a binary world is laid out in very stark terms. It isn’t just a matter of not being understood, sometimes people don’t believe you, they think you’re fooling yourself, not finding yourself. Roving Pack doesn’t shy away from some really ugly moments where the trans community is revealed as not as accepting of gender fluidity as one would hope. I’ve experienced this first hand, with trans guys assuming that genderqueer is just a temporary stop between female and male, and that eventually I’d ‘figure it out’ and get serious about transitioning. Listening in as Click works through what genderqueer means to hir, what it means to be non-binary, begins to see how much bigger gender could be and questions whether T is right for hir — it all feels so familiar. These are the same questions I’ve asked myself, with similar results.
We have great stories and blogs featuring the trans* narrative but we don’t have the same body of work for genderqueers, or for alternative, non-binary trans* stories. Reading Roving Pack made me hungry for more. I want to reach out and gather all those untold stories up in my arms and find a comfy chair. I’m also very aware that I also have a story to tell, and that no one else will tell it if I don’t. I feel not only inspired but called, called to make sure more genderqueer voices are heard, including mine.
Roving Pack is a great story, but not a pretty one. The reality of life for Click and the pack and the greater queer punk trans community was not pretty. At times I needed to put the book down, to take a break, to breathe a little. I wanted desperately to jump into the story, to pull Click aside and say, ‘Hold off, man, not this one… you deserve better” but you know that wouldn’t have worked. Not for any of us. We’ve all made choices that didn’t work out, hooked up with people and situations we regretted later, and we weren’t going to take advice from any old-fart know-it-alls. If we’re lucky, we survive our choices, learn from those experiences, and move on to make better ones.
Roving Pack is good and I predict you’ll get hooked hard in the first couple of pages. As a reader, you’re given a front row seat into a life rich with possibilities and rife with painful challenges. Page by page, you’re pulled along at a fast pace — good luck keeping track of who’s with who, and who is the exe, and which Daddy is with which boy at any given moment. Roving Pack is good because it doesn’t candy-coat, it doesn’t hold back to protect delicate sensibilities, it doesn’t gloss things over or cover up the hard times with the rosy glow of memory. This is no sweet coming of age story, this is the real shit. Sassafras Lowrey takes us right back to that raw, impulsive, embarrassing, triumphant, ever-changing time of our lives when we were busy figuring it all out — and pretty sure we’d do a better job of it than any of the old fart boring adults we saw around us. This is a story about those moments when the idealism of youth clashes with the ugly truth of life and our real selves are born. -
I can think of no higher praise for this book than this: when it was done, I didn't want it to be. Click is going to stay with me for a while. Powerful novel about what gender fluidity looks and feels like, something that is sorely lacking in most of the other work about trans and genderqueer youth. Get this book immediately. HIGHLY recommended.
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Roving Pack is sweet and beautiful and bloody and visceral. I wanted it to go on so much longer. I wanted more because I wanted to see Click have that happy ending ze deserved. But if Roving Pack teaches us nothing else it's that not all of us have happy endings. We just have to do the best we can with the story beforehand. This is a book about growth and journey and self understanding and acceptance. It's about chosen family and the friends we'd kill and die for. And it's about what happens when we realize their love and acceptance has limitations and expectations. It explores peer pressure within subcultures and the pressure to be who everyone else thinks you are.
I loved the open and natural talk of leather and kink and how much more it made me understand gender, sex, and presentation. I loved the fact that it was a mix of public blog posts and private journal entries and seeing how much they could differ. Initially I worried that the book being in blog and journal entries would bother me but all it did was make me feel so much closer to Click than I ever could have otherwise. Click survives chaos and violence and lays hirself open, vulnerable, and bare.
I know that Roving Pack is partially a memoir and I cried when I read the acknowledgments. Because you know what? Click did get that happy ending after all. -
I borrowed this book from Gender Community Lending Library.
It's strange to read this book in 2022 and as part of a very different community to the protagonist Click's, because in many ways the talking points in this book have been appropriated by arch conservatives. Pre 'tipping point' literature tends to read this way, and can sometimes feel overwhelmingly dated. With that in mind, I tried to keep an open mind while reading 'Roving Pack', approaching it on its own terms, and was impressed by the story's nuance and honesty. Some ideas may feel awkward in a modern context. For example, the book implied that Click was effectively 'transitioned too quickly' because of a controlling trans community and an abusive relationship - a talking point it shares with 'Irreversible Damage'!
However, the core dynamics are evergreen. Readers have described the book as a story about peer pressure. I think it's more about the complex interplay of an infinite number of factors present in queer social circles: peer pressure, patriarchy, the odd and sometimes counterintuitive power dynamics that arise as twisted reflections of patriarchy, abusive relationships, the new adult tendency to think in black and white, the craving for consistency that comes from trauma... Nothing about Click's life is particularly similar to my own. I'm a nice middle class man from England. But I could easily recognise these forces because, as they do for Click, they shaped my world at age nineteen.
There's a lot here, and it's more than worth a read.
(Weirdly, I can't stop thinking how it would do great in a transmasc reading circle or grassroots summer school with Carla Pfeffer's Queering Families. Someone make this happen!) -
Incomplete list of trigger warnings: abuse, adultery, child abuse, daddy kink, domestic abuse, drug abuse, homophobia, non-negotiated/undernegotiated BDSM and other kink, nonbinaryphobia, sex between minors and adults, stalking, transphobia. Near the beginning there seems to be a mention of incestuous attraction, but the characters are not blood related and were not raised together (the main character was "adopted" as a brother by a more experienced queer person when ze came out, and this is the person ze is attracted to).
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Fascinating book, I'm so glad it exists as a time capsule for 2002 livejournal, the voice, editing and publishing were rough.
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I don’t know whether it’s a mark of a good or bad book when it finishes and you blink at the page and go ‘you’re just going to stop it there?!’ but I suppose it’s a sign that it’s a not a book that you can just take or leave. You either love it or hate it (like Marmite). I can’t decide which camp I fall into.
I started reading this book in a coffee shop and then promptly didn’t move for an hour and a half apart from to drink my tea. Then I realised the stink eyes I was getting from the staff for taking up a table and went home and finished the book. It was interesting and just as I was thinking I could put it down, it sucked me back in. The characters drove this story one hundred percent. The main plot was a bit up in the air, Click is trying to fit in with the pack? Click is leading the pack? But I liked it anyway. The number of different people that Click encountered was astounding but I never forgot who someone was and who they were to Click.
Oh Click. Sometimes you make really bad decisions and if I was your sister/friend/roommate, I would point out that what you’re doing is only going to hurt in the long run but I knew you wouldn’t listen.
Click’s want to be in a relationship and be taken care of was endearing and heartbreaking at the same time. It led hir into a bad relationship with Hunter (I wanted to punch him in the face so badly, never mind that he’s a fictional character) and to a previous bad relationship with James (who also sounds horrible). Click’s relationship in general sound quite negative a lot of the time (don’t me started on hir biological family) and even people ze trusted ended up letting hir down.
I admit, I’m probably letting the ending of the book colour my view. What happens is that Click starts to transition with T mostly because Hunter thinks that Click isn’t really trans because ze doesn’t want to transition. And then Click starts to get to know hirself a bit better and realise that ze wants to stop T and then gets a lot of hate from the community because ze isn’t really trans because of this apparently.
And then the book ended! After everyone had been huge dickheads by saying Click how ze should identify and saying they weren’t going to talk to hir anymore, the book stopped!
I want to smack my head against the wall. I know this is probably very realistic for people who are gender fluid, especially genderqueer teenagers, to not only face transphobia from cisgender people but also from the trans community as well and in life there are no happy, perfect endings, but I just wanted Click to have one friend that was fine with everything.
I also want to slap many people in the novel around the face but that’s not going to happen.
Four stars because it was a thoroughly enjoyable book but the ending left me more than a little annoyed. -
Click may be what the mainstream self-helpers call transgendered, but in reality, Click is an outcast’s outcast, quickly learning that even those who live outside the box, invent their own pronouns, and reject society’s gender rules, still make and enforce gender rules of their own. Click, who is happy identifying as a boy without getting on hormones and transitioning, doesn’t fit in their boxes, either. The pressure to follow the approved, expected path is immense, even though Click knows that going down that road will turn hir into someone ze doesn’t want to be.
This isn’t an easy book, but it’s an important book. We can all identify with the need to belong, to form our pack of intentional family, and to be accepted by them for who we are. Roving Pack speaks to the kids who’ve been there, but it also speaks to the kids who’ve had an easy time coming out, and to the supportive parents who provide that acceptance when it’s needed most.
I think it doesn’t always occur to accepting parents of queer kids that there are stories like Click’s, and that they’re more common than you’d think.
Yet, though we empathize with Click and hir unapologetically gritty world, Sassafras manages to handle the grit with a surprisingly gentle touch. I didn’t finish the book with resentment for the kids who have it easy, but with a renewed feeling of kinship for the kids who have it hard. -
A sad but fascinating telling of a young person’s complex introduction to queer life, alternative lifestyles, dating, and gender exploration. I do wish there were more details about the setting and the characters, especially for those of us who have never been in this particular type of queer environment. I also think the writing could have been edited and polished a bit more. And lastly, I felt that the ending was too abrupt and did not wrap up the story very well. But overall a good and interesting read.
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This book is wonderfully raw, real and necessary. At first I was taken aback by the format by which it's written but the deeper I delve into it the more I realized how important even that part of it was. In this day, with blogs and social media so prevalent in our daily lives, the format of a blog makes it easy and interesting to read. It's as if you're reading someone's personal thoughts and feelings. It makes it so real. I can't say enough about this book, really.
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Probably 2 1/2 stars. A raw, challenging read due to rough content and sentence structures. I pushed myself to finish the book and am glad I did. I know I will keep some things with me from the text, especially about gender queer teens and the the overall spectrum of gender. This seemed like an adult read for me (there is some domination/submissive behaviors included too), but it all depends on the kid.
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Wow, what a wild ride!! I am just amazed how well Click is keeping hir life together considering all the crap that keeps happening.
I would love to have a book club meeting at UUCA about this book, because I would definitely like to discuss it with others! -
Awesome real, addicting queer read. First time I've read a book about being queer that felt REAL. I loved this book and highly recommend it - I have it for any local friends that want to borrow it!
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2013 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention (5* from at least 1 judge)
