The simplicity of her work is delightfully deceptive. Despite the sense of unfinished or unrealized narrative space, which I did leave the book itching over, the emotional and thematic sketches Porter draws in her strange soft-apocalypse future also fill up the reader’s brain for later perusal. With Trina’s personal revelation and the rescue of the Compound boy at the conclusion, the threads are all tied-off neatly but, to extend the metaphor, perhaps with a handful of dropped stitches preceding. The book itself reads more as a novella or otherwise-luxurious piece of short fiction, lacking enough of the flesh that might stabilize its deeply interesting, thoughtful bones. The third and final section of the novel feels underdeveloped. Structurally, though, The Seep is not necessarily a total success. While the ethical and political context behind this argument is deliciously complicated, and always requires individual effort for critical engagement, Porter’s protagonist makes it real to us through the body and relationships.

Trina also skillfully articulates the tension between building solidarity around difference and a liberal collapse or erasure of difference.

A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on.The feeling of losing something and being unable to move on, both a literal person and a way of life, comes through with powerful clarity. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated. Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep's utopian influence-until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down if something can be imagined, it is possible. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Trina Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle-but nonetheless world-changing-invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Plus never-before-seen short story featuring an expanded ending to the novel.

The Seep by Chana Porter