Green Glass Ghosts

An LGBTQ person on that awkward cusp between adolescence and independence, seeking a new life but ill-equipped for that search, will recognize themselves in this edgy novel. Given the paucity of such books out there, Green Glass Ghosts fills an important niche. It’s a highly believable young-adult/new-adult story written in first person, and the title refers to downtown glass towers and the sense of living life in a ghostly fog.

The 19-year-old hero, lacking both confidence and life experience but armed with a guitar and hope, moves from Calgary to Vancouver to find community, and maybe themself.

They fall in with fellow queer people who introduce them to friends, parties, drugs, busking, making out in public and more, and they try very hard to fit in to this more street-smart, worldly crowd. (There are no explicit sex scenes.)

The music soaked through me. I wasn’t allowed to dance as a kid because of the whole Pentecostal thing, but for a minute I felt like I almost could. My body was electric, and when a hand touched my shoulder, turning me around, I didn’t jump. It was Riki, a half-smirk on their face. My mind stopped on one thought: I wanted Riki. If I could be closer to them, I would be further from everything else. Whatever I had been before, whatever had happened to me, none of it would matter anymore.

They’re not the only person in their crowd who comes from a dysfunctional family and carries trauma not kept entirely under control with nonstop drinking.

I slept with a knife under my pillow for years after my dad got kicked out of our house for good. I always thought there was a chance they would find their way back in. Sometimes I still wake up and feel like they’re in the room with me.

Initially, it feels like it’s working out. They land a job and apartment, begin a relationship, and discover a diverse community and more welcoming city. Even so, it’s a struggle to pretend they aren’t overwhelmed at times.

This queer scene is kind of harsh – like a contest to see who’s the queerest, especially since most of us come from places where we had to hide it or people would try to stamp it out of us.

And the further they get pulled in, the more they question some of what’s going on, especially when their partner pushes for an open relationship and starts seeing someone else.
I’d always had to stay one step ahead. Of my parents, who would have sent me to conversion therapy. Of the people at my school and on the street who wanted to hurt me for being queer. I had to spot aggression before it spotted me and decide if I should disappear or risk a confrontation. In Vancouver, I’d been able to put a lot of that knowledge away. Few people here seemed to want to hurt me for being queer. Instead, it seemed as if the queers were hurting each other.”

Things crescendo till their breakup leads our protagonist to the brink of suicide.

Does being hurt turn you into the same kind of person as the one who hurt you? I needed to get away from myself. I wanted to shed my body so I could become someone new. But there was nowhere I could go where I wouldn’t still be myself.

In the end, they realize they may have to face their alcoholism in order to sort out the rest of their issues.

Again, there’s a need for a novel like Green Glass Ghosts, and its strength is in offering numerous authentic vignettes of life as an unmoneyed queer person on downtown Vancouver’s East side.

But those vignettes tend to wander from one to another, rather than being threaded together to build plot, raise stakes and contribute to character development. The story would have benefitted from more internal dialogue and defined character arc. Also, given that the story is set around 2000, young readers will bump into mentions of floppy discs, four-tracks, webmail as a new concept, and references to Survivor television episodes – more likely to feel jarring than help them relate to the story. Still, despite sometimes stilted dialogue and flat writing (short, choppy sentences), one can’t help caring for the hero. It’s natural to root for them, stick with them for the entire ride and feel truly hopeful, as they themselves do, at the novel’s close.