At the Freak Show

At the Freak Show is a wildly original narrative following the survivor of a set of conjoined twins, their community of eccentrics, and their alternative histories.

Asa has spent their whole life seeing another face in the mirror, the face of their conjoint twin who died during a catastrophic attempt to separate them at age three. The lone survivor, Asa has lived their life in between. Assigned a gender for surgical convenience, Asa has at times identified as male, at other times, female. But through music, Asa finds acceptance of their true, non-binary, gender-fluid self.

Asa is unashamed and unafraid, but life outside the binary is not easy. As Asa becomes a famous musician, they must face the people who find their existence a threat. Life as a lone twin is also not easy. Asa knows themself, but must always wonder what could have been. Throughout their journey, Asa experiences visions of alternate universes, some that include the survival of their conjoined twin, Angelo, who Asa calls mirror boy.

A stunningly original work that breaks new literary ground, At the Freak Show smashes together speculative fiction, coming of age, social justice fiction, rock biography, and literary mastery to create a timeless, human story about the search for belonging and self-acceptance.

Candas Jane Dorsey is the award-winning, LGBTQ2+ author of seven novels, four short story collections, and four books of poetry. Her work has won the Otherwise Award, William L. Crawford Award, and Aurora Prize, among others. She has co-edited several important speculative fiction anthologies and for fourteen years was a publisher and acquiring editor. Candas has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, the Edmonton Arts and Cultural Hall of Fame, and has received the Province of Alberta Centennial Gold Medal for her literary and activism work. Candas lives and writes in Edmonton, Alberta.

With a humanity and passion all her own, Candas Jane Dorsey isn’t just a comer, she’s a winner.

—Ursula K. Le Guin

A complex and fascinating variation on the Platonic myth—the androgyne severed from its Other/Self—yet nothing as simple as the male/female alternated division experienced by Tiresias, the blind seer of old. The shifting pronouns sweep us into an enigmatic—and yet controlled—identity whirlwind. The writing—at times poetic, often incisive, sometimes brutal in its realism, but always immersive—plunges us into the world all too invisible or misunderstood of those who are labelled “freaks” from physical “monsters” to those who don’t conform to narrow description of sex and genre. As the protagonists drift into the phantasms of desire (and thanks to the author’s skillful writing), so does the story drifts into magic realism. Or perhaps parallel universes? Anything is possible—including a less mutilated life for these outcasts once they find one another. At the very least, the protagonist, in their various genres and identities, triumphantly reclaim all their lives, very publicly, right up until the end.

—Elisabeth Vonarburg, author of In the Mother’s Land