Wild Geese

by Soula Emmanuel

Debut novelist Soula Emmanuel tells the story of Phoebe Forde, an Irish trans woman living in Scandinavia who unexpectedly reconnects with her first (and only) girlfriend, igniting memories she thought she’d left behind.

Over-educated and underpaid, Phoebe Forde is finally settling into her new life in Copenhagen with her anxious dog Dolly. Almost three years into her gender transition, she has learned to move through the world carefully, savouring small moments of joy. A woman without a past can be anyone she wants - that is, until an unexpected visit from her first (and only) girlfriend brings her face-to-face with a life she thought she would never see again.

In the course of a single weekend, as their old romance kindles something radical and new, Grace helps Phoebe to navigate the jagged edges of migration and alienation.

Wild Geese is an intimate and moving novel of past lives, messy feelings and the desire to start afresh. With wit and warmth, it charts the dislocations and relocations, encounters, accidents and memories, and the layers of love and loss that constitute a life.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Transgender, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Lesbian

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 30, 2023

About the author

Soula Emmanuel is a trans writer who was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a Greek father. She attended university in Ireland and Sweden, graduating with a master’s in demography which she likes to think inspired her interest in society’s outliers. She has written for IMAGE magazine, Rogue Collective and the Project Arts Centre, and has had fiction published by The Liminal Review. She was longlisted for Penguin’s WriteNow programme in 2020, took part in the Stinging Fly fiction summer school in 2021 and was a participant in the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency’s mentorship programme for 2021-22. She currently lives on Ireland’s east coast.

Reviews

[Barry Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

brilliant irish debut, like a trans before sunrise but with references to richard boyd barrett

[jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

this did not give what needed to be given


read as part of 202-Queer 🌈✨

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally finished my first netgalley arc :)
This was wonderful! Beautifully written. it's different to anything else i have read so far, and parts of the writing confused me at times but for the most part i enjoyed the style and the detail. I now have a list of new words I've never seen before which is great. Also, those moments when you're reading and want to highlight nice quotes all the time? I wanted to do that frequently throughout this book. A reread in the future sounds like a good plan.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this quietly dazzling story of departure and return, Soula Emmanuel’s Phoebe swiftly wins our hearts with her candor and wit. Never before has a character so luminously reckoned with the joys and terrors of being known. A gorgeous and heartening read.

[Lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

What a frustrating read, despite quite a few genuine and beautiful moments throughout this, it felt like it was constantly punctuated with saccharine overindulgences and/or one too many 'miserable isolated trans woman and her cis saviour' moments. The first half of this especially felt like Before Sunrise (a film I love) was dragged backwards through shallow Gender and jokes/references that didn't land for me. So close to being great, but misses the mark. The second half is far better, and helped redeem this from the initial near constant eyerolling of the first.

[HB.]

Genuinely have no idea where I actually land on this book. Was it bad? Definitely not. Did I enjoy it? I have no clue. Writing skewed a bit too much for my personal preferences, but some parts were so incredibly beautiful. It feels like one I'd need to re-read to parse out how I feel about it.

[Moira · Rating 3 out of 5]

notes app is like a cutlery drawer for real

[Synne Sylibris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a beautiful book.
It's about two Irish friends/exes reconnecting over a weekend in Copenhagen, talking about their past, present and future.
It's quite slow and prose-heavy, and I found that the best way to enjoy it was by just sinking into the dreamlike narrative and immerse myself in all the words, without being too bothered with taking in every single word or metaphor
(and a few of the metaphors were honestly a bit odd...).

The book can seem a bit meandering and aimless in the beginning, but it does build up to a turning point/climax that I found very moving.

The audiobook narration was mostly good, except for the fact that the narrator (Clara Harte) BUTCHERED most of the Danish and Swedish words – like, it was actually so bad I sometimes did not understand the words she was trying to say.
Damn it, would it have been too much to ask to look up the pronunciation on Google Translate or something!?🙄 (Or make Google Translate say the words instead of her🙃)

If you're not Scandinavian you probably don't care about this, but to me it was JARRING, verging on RIDICULOUS. It was laugh-out-loud-BAD.

Sorry about all the capital letters, but I felt the need to be vocal about this🥰

I liked the book though🙃

[phoebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

yes of course i loved this; a messy queer relationship, one endless identity crisis, a narrator named phoebe (!!!), lengthy pondering of womanhood etc etc. would have preferred a few less flowery similes, but for the most part loved the writing :))

“i am thirty years old and living in postscript already, not on the edge but over it, a happenstance life on a tranquil margin.”

“… i was in thrall to her. not merely in the palm of her hand but tucked behind a fingernail like fortunate dirt.” like!!! <3

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild Geese is a novel about a woman who spends a weekend with her ex-girlfriend and explores the messiness of life. Phoebe is trans and Irish and lives in Copenhagen, where she moves through the world largely alone, with the company of the dog she looks after, Dolly. When her ex-girlfriend Grace suddenly appears on her doorstep, visiting the city for the weekend, something is kindled between them, but it isn't straightforward, and both of them have pasts and places to reconcile and a sense of being lost to face.

This is a beautiful novel, set over a single weekend (with timestamps) from Phoebe's point of view, and manages to capture a lot of wistfulness, loss, and hope within the writing. It combines poetic, literary prose with modern references (Blåhaj being my favourite, but I was sat with one whilst reading) and the limited timeframe of the narrative allows for a lot of space for not only thinking about the past, but also plenty of thoughts about the present and future. I spent a fair bit of the book worried about how sadly it might end, but actually I think it was a powerful narrative with a conclusion that was satisfying and shows how things can be complicated and messy, but also help you to move forward.

As the title suggests, this is a book about two women chasing things and hoping to find them in each other as they reunite. Wild Geese is both an emotional look at a relationship and the changing nature of one, and an exploration of escaping place and gender and how these can feel intertwined.

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

OHHHH MYYYY GODDDDDDD

Phoebe, an Irish trans woman studying for her PhD in Copenhagen suddenly finds herself feeling uncomfortably close to her pre-transition early adulthood, when her ex-girlfriend, Grace, shows up at her door after 6 years of no contact. Over the course of one weekend, the two women attempt to make sense of their relationship, past and present, as they navigate their traumas and confront the most transient of topics: the self. Emmanuel's prose is shrewd, funny, coy; her genius is glittered throughout this novel. When I finished this novel, the first thing I wanted to do was start it over again.

[Aurore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hazy, melancholic and contemplative. Soula Emmanuel’s writing is genuinely gorgeous and raw. I had a lovely time reading it!

[The Lesbian Library (Maddy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a beautiful book. The writing is so enticing and poetic. This is a great character study. I think the pacing was off for me though and it didn’t suck me in fully. But it definitely brought up so many thoughts and emotions, I often had to pause reading to reflect. I recommend.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ouch ouch ouch.

Shout out to everyone who moved far from their hometown and transitioned, and now years later has a hard time interacting with people from the prologue section of their life because it puts you in a weird headspace. Boy do I have a novel for you!

[ines · Rating 3 out of 5]

beautiful writing, sometimes a bit too beautiful lol

[Lizzie Jackson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't pick up a book just because it has geese in the title and on the cover

[Carina · Rating 5 out of 5]

a book about doing a PhD that you lowkey despise hates to see me coming

[hanita · Rating 5 out of 5]

kind of life changing

[Patty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is the only book that has ever made me feel the same way as Never Let Me Go. Instant canon. Love and loss, what else to life is there? And yet…

[Willa Scanlon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars for the writing quality because I learned many a word reading this. Grace was off her rocker and I mean that so genuinely. I don’t love how the book painted this relationship as fleeting and positively transformative when Grace was flying through boundaries and causing emotional damage everywhere she went. Showing abusive qualities as quirky traits just because the relationship is two women is still not a great message.

[kari trail · Rating 3 out of 5]

enjoyed this! i kept jumping back and forth between “wow i love the writing” and “omg i cannot stand to read another simile” so you could say i had mixed feelings. dense! but overall interesting and a very lovely story.

“i was in thrall of her. not merely in the palm of her hand but tucked behind a fingernail like fortunate dirt.”

(thank you phoebe for underlining this line it was also my favorite and i’m stealing it for my review hehe)

[liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

“for so long i have been like a child, so frightened of my capacity for love that i cannot bear to give any away. but now i am burning furiously, from the inside out… it is by actions like these, the encounter not merely of love but ardent recognition, that we make each other legible, that we make each other bearable.”

i actually shed some tears on the plane Wtf

[Marta ౨ৎ˚ · Rating 1 out of 5]

this did not give what i wanted

[Rosalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the discussion of Michael Collins boy-milk I found an Ireland I could really be proud of.

[endrju · Rating 3 out of 5]

It almost got to four stars reading for me. I mean, how not to love "the bucolic touched with the bubonic" as a description of Tivoli amusement park. But once I saw "symphony" used to describe multiplicity of sounds, I couldn't unsee it. I'm certainly looking forward to whatever Soula Emmanuel does next, I'm sure it'll be grand.

[Hen Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was quite moved by this book, it packs a lot of emotion and story into a small novel, and yeah i felt i could relate to the characters a bit too much sometimes.

[Rashel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed and will definitely check out more by this author. The second to last chapter went over my head and I’m begging someone to read this so we can discuss. Overall, I love this quiet slice of life that took place over one weekend. The characters were messy and imperfect which obviously is a recipe for success for me. This is filled with beautiful fkn prose and musings on womanhood. A modern coming of age (except in your 30s)

[Leo]

Unsure about a rating. I think I liked it? Found it a bit hard to follow most of the time. Very fancy sentences but often hard to keep to the plot. I did enjoy the depiction of Phoebe's identity and her messed up relationship with Grace.

[Leoniepeonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this. I listened to the audiobook version which I would definitely recommend, as the acting was excellent, but it was also a bit tricky for me because I'm definitely a visual person and I don't feel I was able to appreciate the vastness and intimacy of Emmanuel's writing in listening to it alone. This could well have been five stars for me if I'd read it, which is a shame - I would've liked the space to sit and think about the many references included, and appreciate the subtleties and nuances to the text. Big fan, would re-read.

[Alexa Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked. Sometimes it felt like the author was saying things just to say them and it made the story a bit incongruent but I LOVED Phoebe as a character and i found her story very touching (and uncomfortably relatable). I also thought they poeticism of the writing was incredibly lovely and well done at some points and slightly irritating and pretentious at others. On an unrelated note I love a good dog character and Dolly delivered, she reminded me very much of my dear beautiful Pepper who I miss so much.