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Craig Silvey on his new book, Honeybee
Honeybee is the long-awaited follow-up to Jasper Jones from Western Australian author CRAIG SILVEY. As MAX LEWIS writes, it’s a tender look at adolescence, identity and friendship that is well worth the wait.
As we get older, our adolescence becomes a distant, perhaps buried memory. We forget the confounding new emotions, the awkward ways our bodies shift, the times when our innocent vision of the world is snatched away, even for a moment. Maybe it’s our desire to remember, and be humbled by, our lost youth that makes books like Jasper Jones so popular. Craig Silvey’s sophomore book captured hearts worldwide with its tender yet confronting look at dysfunctional families and the pain of being an outsider. His newest book Honeybee explores similar themes to shed light on an under-represented and misunderstood group of people. As Craig tells me, it all began on a bridge.
‘A couple of years ago, my brother was driving home after picking up his partner from the airport. As they drove across an overpass, he noticed a teenager standing on the other side of the railing, looking down.’
Craig’s brother called the police, while his partner cautiously approached the person to talk them down. Eventually, Craig says, the teenager shared why they were up there.
‘They were transgender. They had no network of support. They had been abandoned by their family, and they saw no pathway that led beyond their anguish and pain.’
Emergency personnel arrived and pulled the teenager over the edge to safety. Over the following days, Craig and his brother attempted to reconnect with them, to no avail. Despite never having met this young person, their story stuck with Craig.
‘Since I could hold a pen, I’ve processed my thoughts and digested my emotions with pen and paper. It felt natural to write about it, and I wanted to better educate myself about the challenges faced by trans people.’
Honeybee begins much in the same way: a 14-year-old, Sam, standing outside the railing of a bridge. On the opposite end, Vic, a man past his prime, smokes his final cigarette. Across the bridge, their eyes meet.
‘Two very different people,’ Craig says, ‘brought together by the same devastating intention.’
Sam and Vic form an unlikely bond and privately commit to the task of keeping each other alive. Vic shares that he’s lost the will to live following the death of his wife and soulmate, Edith. Sam keeps him company, grateful for the opportunity to express her love of cooking, and to get away from her drug-addicted mother and criminal stepfather. The freedom from her homelife, however, forces her to confront an aspect of herself that she has long tried to bury: the fact she was born in the wrong body.
‘In telling Sam’s story, it’s not my intention to present a definitive account of being transgender,’ Craig tells me. ‘This is Sam’s story, specific to her character and the domestic pressures she is under. That said, when it comes to Sam’s dysphoria and expressions of her identity, there is no creative license on my part – every word is informed by research and reportage.’
Over the course of the novel, Sam meets new people and has new experiences that challenge her perceptions of the world and her place in it. Among these is Peter – a nurse by day, the queen Fella Bitzgerald by night – who introduces Sam to the glamorous world of drag. Later, she tries to bury her gender questioning and masculinise herself by lifting weights and becoming increasingly involved in her stepdad’s extortion racket. Regardless of gender identity, Sam’s struggle to accept herself will be achingly familiar to those who have felt like an outsider.
When it comes to the telling of trans stories, there’s often discussion on who gets to tell them (the documentary Disclosure on Netflix is fascinating insight into this). After all, nobody knows the trans experience – the good and the bad – better than trans people themselves. That being said, there is some benefit to an outside perspective filtering these stories, shaping them to help the majority better understand them. Many readers may not pick up a book from a transgender author, but they will surely pick up the new novel from the author of Jasper Jones. With Honeybee, Craig hopes to use his platform as a writer for this very purpose.
‘It’s my sincere hope that in telling Sam’s story I might offer readers an emotional context through which they can deepen their understanding of the challenges faced by young trans people in Australia. And I hope that trans and non-binary readers can read Honeybee and identify with Sam’s story, and feel represented, visible, recognised and respected.’
