Bone Horn

A literature scholar turned private investigator takes on a strange case related to the late Alice B. Toklas in this clever debut novel from poet Bussey-Chamberlain (Grief Is the Thing in Pleather). The unnamed narrator has recently left academia and London behind and set up shop in present-day Brighton. She receives a call from a mysterious man who claims that Toklas, partner of modernist writer Gertrude Stein, had a horn growing from her forehead, which she hid behind hats. For reasons that come out later, he desperately wants the narrator to track down the horn. She agrees because she needs the money, but she’s not convinced by the rumor, which she takes for “cruel lesbian gossip.” She also feels some kinship with Toklas, who survived Stein by 21 years, given that her partner, May, has recently died. Still, she investigates in earnest, traveling to the British Library to view Toklas’s archives and stopping into Shakespeare and Company in Paris, where a bookseller insists Toklas was merely hiding a cyst. Throughout, the narrator offers thoughtful meditations on grief (“No one will ask me if my grief can be contained to paid leave”), which are leavened with droll humor about the futile and misguided work of academia. There’s much to admire in this well-paced queer detective novel. (June)