What Happened to Lani Garver by Carol Plum-Ucci

Claire certainly learns from Lani, whose preternatural grasp of psychology makes people uncomfortable and who isn’t afraid to shove Claire towards the help she needs, but Lani resists. Lani has a much larger narrative outside out of Claire, having only returned home to Hackett after a year on the street (attending a prestigious arts academy in Philadephia) in order to fulfill the obligations of their father’s will.

While Claire, with her limited worldview, sometimes wonders if Lani is playing her gay best friend, Lani identifies as no gender and no sexuality. What Happened to Lani Garver? tries to deconstruct the Magical Queer trope. That description may sound like Carol Plum-Ucci is explicitly framing Lani as magical, and she is. But, as the novel continues, Claire is not talking about Lani’s gender-she’s talking about whether or not Lani was a floating angel, It would soothe her soul to know, given that Lani’s body has never surfaced after the two of them were almost drowned at the hands of the popular boys of Hackett, the tiny, backwards island off the coast of Pennsylvania they inhabit. The cover copy, which ends by questioning Lani’s gender, is not encouraging, and Claire, our protagonist, spends the first chapter wondering whether or not it would have changed things if she’d known what Lani was. When I started What Happened to Lani Garver?, I was afraid that it might fall into Magical Queer territory. Rayon manages to hit every stereotype about transgendered women almost casually, from Leto refusing to even identify her as such (he only refers to trans folk as “the Rayons of the world” in his acceptance speech) to the information that Rayon was a completely invented character.

Jared Leto’s Oscar win for his role as Rayon in The Dallas Buyers’ Club was an ugly cap to a season of measured, indignant discussion about Rayon’s status as a Magical Queer who dies tragically after inspiring the straight hero to greatness and the choice to have a cisgendered man play a transgendered woman.

What Happened to Lani Garver by Carol Plum-Ucci