Sam K MacKinnon (Bryce Hoye)

Lex is having a difficult winter. Since identifying as gender-fluid, they no longer feel sexual with their bisexual partner Ada. They are enduring a lot to get approval for gender-affirming chest surgery, but can’t decide if they want to follow through. A restaurant job at fledgling queer bistro Toast threatens to overstimulate their autistic brain – but also brings them into the orbit of Sadie, a fellow gender nonconformist they can’t stop thinking about.

Manitoba-based author Sam K MacKinnon, whose journalism and essays have appeared in Xtra Magazine and the CBC, has written a nuanced and complex debut novel. The Body Riddle explores the intricacies of sexuality and gender identity through its central figure, the uncertain, flawed, and deeply relatable Lex. Despite covering significant thematic and conceptual ground, The Body Riddle is a quick, easy, and thoroughly enjoyable fiction.

Ada and Lex’s relationship norms reflect a commitment to ethical non-monogamy, including honest disclosure of outside sexual interests before pursuing other paramours. But Lex turns jealous when Ada gets close to Noah, a man she works with, and struggles to admit the allure of their own work colleague Sadie. Lex has never experienced lust for another trans-identified person before; it feels like a seismic shift, as hard to process as it is to articulate. At a time when Lex’s own gender identity feels so malleable, is their sexual orientation taking a turn for the unexpected as well?

The novel’s centrepiece is “How to Solve the Body Riddle,” a highly detailed “instruction manual” for navigating life as a nonbinary person, drafted by Lex and saved to iCloud. Part diary, part manifesto, part prose poem, this segment vividly communicates the pain, joy, frustration, and confusion of articulating your own gender in a society that only sees two options – and never lets you forget it. The cloud is where a lot of Lex’s thoughts live, including the strategic reminders they use to navigate social relations with the neurotypical people who surround them.

The Body Riddle conveys a richly textured sense of place: the queer community is small and close-knit, February is “colder than Mars,” and a key character has a common Mennonite surname – we know that we are in Winnipeg.

MacKinnon applies a deft comic touch, riffing on silly elementary-school humour when post-surgery Lex refers to themself as “boobless,” or deploying a trans-flag-coloured sex toy as a symbol of Ada’s well-intentioned yet overbearing attempts to reignite intimacy. Much later in the novel, a climactic sex scene is handled with sensitivity and care: alive with energy and eroticism while still respecting the characters’ personhoods and foregrounding consent.

MacKinnon centres trans and nonbinary identities in The Body Riddle, clearly writing to and for their community. The novel assumes the reader will have a grasp of contemporary conversations about polyamory, sexual ethics, and gender multiplicity. Still, MacKinnon occasionally indulges in over-explication, expressing exactly what Lex is thinking and feeling when that has already been made clear by the character’s actions and dialogue. But this is a minor complaint about an otherwise strong debut.