Review: Invisible Monsters

by Evelyn Grim Marshall

Invisible Monsters is at its core a story about gender. Why then does it completely fail to provide a balanced, fair or nuanced depiction to its LGBT+ characters? Or rather, its predators and their victims. Therein lies the crux of the problem.

I first learned of Invisible Monsters through Panic! At the Disco, specifically their song Time to Dance from the album Fever. I knew the book was about beauty standards and had a trans character, but that was about it. At the time I was questioning my gender ID but turning to books didn’t help me much. The only other novel I’d read with a trans character had them in a bit role, and they died after only a couple of appearances. Those sparse handfuls of lines and paragraphs provided more nuance and depth than I would find in Invisible Monsters.

So, I ordered the book online, but after reading it, I couldn’t have been more horrified.

From the get-go, descriptions of Brandy Alexander are rife with transphobia, both blatant and covert. She has large hands and a prominent Adam’s apple, which the book asserts cannot possibly be altered by surgery. Aside from being wrong on at least one count — see tracheal shave — it falls into the tired, outdated trope of “clocking” a trans character based on looks. Brandy embodies an exaggerated form of hyper-femininity in the rest of her body, having proportions similar to the original Barbie doll, large breasts, miniscule waist — achieved through a dangerous rib removal — and wide hips. The narration focuses on these details to an obscene degree. as Brandy uses shawls and scarves to cover the protagonist’s face, which is missing the lower jaw after being shot.

Throughout this, the novel attempts to claim “woke” points by including a virulently transphobic nun everyone hates and by giving Brandy a speech about presentation and making her wear gaudy rings to draw attention to her “mannish” hands, almost as if she is waving a flag saying “I am trans and proud and totally not a transphobic caricature”.

This signposting could potentially draw in some readers, provided they stop reading there and don’t discover that ZOMG Brandy is “really” the narrator’s long assumed dead-of-complications-from-AIDS brother, who fell in with drag queens and was convinced to transition for the hell of it. The transphobia is compounded by the fact that Brandy sees it as a form of self-harm! The mutilation association is furthered through the character of Evie Cottrell, a trans woman obsessed with piercings (and part of the reason why I hate being called Evie).

So how does the novel deal with gay men? Not any better.

First off, the narrator insists that since her boyfriend wore a speedo once, she should’ve known he was “bi at best” — pretty much a direct quote; the line is burned into my brain.

This so called boyfriend also happens to be the police officer who molested Brandy as a teenager and gave her an STI, which resulted in her being kicked out of her abusive childhood home. It must be noted he was supposed to be investigating this abuse and instead blackmailed Brandy into this on the promise the allegations against her parents would go away. It gets even worse though, because Brandy “got confused” by this and started to think she was a gay man.

Instead of addressing any of this trauma, the narrator decides to spike this man’s drinks with estrogen pills and takes vindictive glee in his emasculation. The same estrogen pills Brandy steals from random houses during showings and eats a ridiculous amount of in one scene where the narrator considers overdosing her on a cocktail of pills.

I should also mention also that despite being siblings there’s a weird scene partway through the book where Brandy basically propositions the narrator, giving the reason that she hasn’t had bottom surgery yet. They are both secretly aware of who the other is at this point. It manages to be both incestuous, homophobic and transphobic all at once.

We aren’t even finished yet.

At the climax of the novel, Brandy, the narrator and the boyfriend all go crash Evie Cottrell’s marriage. There are some more attempts at the basket hoop of wokeness with Evie’s transphobic parents and Brandy’s sticking up for a fellow trans woman, but then the groom is found having sex with the alleged boyfriend and the narrator sets the place on fire. Then Evie grabs a shotgun and shoots Brandy for some reason — apparently they planned this because Brandy mentions missing the bulletproof part of the vest and it’s all sad for a moment.

I wanted to vomit several times while I was reading the latter half of Invisible Monsters due to the sheer LGBT-phobia on display. Then I found out the history behind the novel, and it all got so much worse.

Chuck Palahniuk posed as a trans woman named Cherry on some message boards while he was writing this. He pretended to be new to the community and looking for advice from older trans women. Then one of his friends found out, and told him to stop.

So he made a post on the forum claiming to be “Cherry’s friend” and said she had committed suicide. I reiterate: He pretended to be a trans woman, and then said she had killed herself.

He’s been pretty open about that as far as I know. Make of it what you will.

My advice? Don’t read this book.