Well, we have finally made it! The final week of the readalong. It's been really fun revisiting Fix. I can't believe my boys have been out in the world for an entire year already. It's been a pretty surreal twelve months.

Right now, I'm working on edits for one manuscript, and drafting another. It'll be a while before they make their way into readers' hands, and I can't really say much, but I'm so excited by the stories that will one day accompany Fix on bookshelves. Maybe I'll do a readalong for those, too, one day?

For now, let's talk about Chapter 20 all the way through to the Epilogue. If you haven't read the previous posts, or finished the book…uh, spoilers?? What are you doing????? (It's a happy ending, if that's what you're worried about).

They were the same in all the ways that mattered and different in the ways that didn't. He knew that now. This was what he was. Not half of each world, incomplete and stitched together. They were two wholes. Whole together. Pax was the fox just as the fox was him. They could not be teased apart because to do so would be to unravel the entire tapestry.

I think I may have mentioned several hundred times that I love monsters, and Cohen's Monster Culture. The vixen, and the nature-infused magic in Fix, stem from a combination of Irish mythology, ecofeminist theory, queer theory, and monster theory.

"Thesis III: The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis" — (Jeffery Jerome Cohen, Monster Culture (Seven Theses))

In fact, there's probably more philosophies wrapped up in it too, things that have stuck with me from Hermann Hesse's Demian or Ursula K. Le Guin's version of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Too much for a blog post, maybe more of a dissertation or thesis, but if you wanted some supplemental reading for this YA novel, there you have it.

Queer people have been Othered, made monstrous, and portrayed as strange and dangerous. You don't have to look far to find stories about how queer and trans people are predatory. These narratives have had very real, tangible consequences for people — about the spaces they can occupy, their professional lives, their safety in public spaces. It's undeniable, and I am certainly not trying to diminish that.

On a personal note, however, I have found that reclaiming the label of monster has been empowering. Rather than trying to pretend to be something I'm not, and I've embraced the transformative, unbounded aspects of the queer, the Other, the monstrous. I take pride in it. That is part of my intention behind Pax, who has one foot in either world, feeling incomplete or divided, until he realises he can be wholly one thing and wholly another.

He finds acceptance in the vixen, and in George (who takes the shapeshifting thing in her stride, because she's a legend).

support the author!

Hanan, too, finds acceptance and understanding in Aodhán, when they break the first cracks into his belief that he is bad, wrong, weak, that he deserved what happened to him.

The past, which has been growing louder with every chapter, comes to a head for Hanan and Pax. We have Cass — or the Cass-shaped illusion — in the forest, and we have Pax's father.

The last few chapters of A Fix of Light get particularly dark. I think, in order for Hanan and Pax to grow, they needed to confront their deepest shadows.

I talked about this last week, too: avoiding, or trying to move past something and just hoping time will bury it, prolongs the suffering. It's terrifying, and painful, to come face to face with the things that have hurt you, that have happened to you, but ultimately that is how you address a wound.

That's not to say that the events of the final chapters are the only or best ways the boys could have healed. Far from it. The things that occur in Fix — the Cass manifestation, and Pax's father appearing — are further traumatising. The ideal thing for both of them comes from the positive interpersonal relationships with friends and family with whom they can talk about their feelings, and feel safe (plus professional help).

That might be obvious to say, but I wanted to be explicit about it, especially for any young people reading A Fix of Light.

She was silent for a minute. "This doesn't fix everything, you know."

"You're right. It…it wasn't supposed to. Even if he never wants to see my face again" — he seemed to choke on the words — "it doesn't matter. I'd do it again. I just want him to be safe, George. I want him to be happy. With or without me."

I didn't want Hanan saving Pax to wipe the slate clean entirely — I thought that would be disingenuous, and too easy. Otherwise, it would be easy to read Hanan's rescue effort as entirely motivated by getting back in Pax's good books, rather than an action motivated by love, and care.

Hanan caused Pax real hurt, and still has to prove that he understands what he did, and how it hurt him, and that he won't repeat the mistake. Humans hurt each other, whether purposefully or not, and it's inevitable that they will fight or argue or need to repair things again. But, as Pax says,

It's just something people do. Love is about doing the work anyway. I love you. And you are worth the work.

I wanted to end the novel, after so much darkness, with a profound sense of love. Familial, platonic, romantic, and self-love. I wanted the reader to feel assured that no matter what happened, Hanan, Pax, and their loved ones would be okay. It's a book filled with magic, but the hope, for me, had to feel real, attainable. Magic didn't solve their problems, or fix anything — unless, of course, you think love is a kind of magic.

Subscribe to Marginalia

…we made it. We did it! There you have it! A Fix of Light book club edition is now complete! Thank you for coming along on this journey with me, and for putting up with a weekly email.

Marginalia will be back after a small break. I've got words to write and edit, which is exciting and time consuming and taking up most of the space in my brain. I'll be back in a few weeks.

In the meantime, as always, tog go bog é x