Isaac Fellman is on a roll.
His debut novel, “The Breath of the Sun,” won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for queer science fiction, fantasy and horror. His second novel is already popping up on several lists of 2022’s most anticipated books. Readers of romance, fantasy and literary fiction are all looking forward to “Dead Collections,” and I’m happy to report that they will not be disappointed — this book delivers on all of the above.
“Dead Collections” is the story of Sol Katz, a vampire and archivist working for the Historical Society of Northern California. Haunted by a very rational fear of fatal sunlight exposure, Sol spends his days literally buried in work, sifting through the discarded ephemera of human lives in a basement office that has become his prison, and potentially his tomb.
When a beautiful widow walks in the door with a problem that only he can solve, Sol begins to come alive. Elsie Maine was married to a narcissistic screenwriter, a charismatic lesbian who left behind a mountain of papers when she died. Struggling to cope with her own grief, Elsie is desperate to unload the burden of her wife’s unfinished business — letters, scripts, drafts of a never-published novel. “I never want to see this stuff again,” she tells Sol. “I’m sorry if I sound callous. It’s just that I feel her presence, and it makes me so tired.”
The instant spark of attraction between Sol and Elsie and the romance that unfolds between them is very sweet, very intimate and very, very queer. In general Sol is a great character, and his voice is the core of the novel. Like Fellman’s previous work, this is a memoir written from a unique point of view, and every part of Sol’s identity is important: He is a trans man, a man in love, an archivist and a vampire, and all of these things are intimately intertwined and become inseparable as he evolves into a whole person.
In many ways, the protagonist could be an analog for the author, as both Sol Katz and Isaac Fellman seem to be Jewish trans men who work as archivists in San Francisco. It would be tempting to call the novel “autobiographical,” especially since Fellman tweeted that Sol’s basement office is based on his own workplace, give or take a few extra rooms. The San Francisco setting certainly jumps out at the reader whenever our hero goes outside — whether he’s hitting a taco stand, riding BART, catching a movie at the Metreon or meeting with a support group in a church on Haight Street. Sol definitely feels like a local.
Calling Fellman’s work “autobiographical” is missing the point, however. His previous novel, “The Breath of the Sun,” was a book about mountain climbing — a book so beautifully written that the author blurb had to include the words “He does not climb mountains.”
“Dead Collections” is a similar literary achievement, a book so firmly anchored in space and time, and so rooted in queer and trans intimacy that it achieves the same hyperreal quality.
Who knows? Maybe the author blurb of the second printing will include a new disclaimer: “Isaac Fellman is an archivist in Northern California. He is not a vampire.”
Dead Collections
By Isaac Fellman
(Penguin Books; 256 pages; $17)
Isaac Fellman in conversation with Charlie Jane Anders:In person. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22. Free; masks, proof of vaccination and registration required. Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 Ninth Ave., S.F.greenapplebooks.com