A Murky Transformation
In his young adult book Light in the Canyon, Darren Cools’s exploration of gender reaches an ambiguous conclusion.
Review by Megan Foster
There is no question that the concept of gender has largely shaped humanity. Consequently, in a young adult novel that tackles everything from grief to guilt to puberty, it’s little wonder that gender plays a crucial role. In his debut novel Light in the Canyon, Darren Cools portrays the fallout of a catastrophically failed science experiment in a tight-knit community. One of the characters, a newly teenaged Jamie, spontaneously transitions into a girl. While Cools understandably portrays Jamie’s internalized misogyny, the narrative struggles to convey the joys of girlhood, not to mention the ultimate conclusions Jamie reaches about his experience. What could’ve been a thoughtful exploration turns out to be a muddled journey with an ambiguous destination.
The novel follows Halley, a girl grieving her mother’s death; Jamie, a fresh thirteen-year-old grappling with his older brother’s silence since starting college; and Raina, the local librarian haunted by a tragic accident from her own childhood. One fall evening Halley and her dad visit her eccentric uncle Gill, who constantly constructs wild inventions in his basement. This time Gill claims to have built a cosmic ray collector. His bizarre invention works––but not the way he intended. The exploding machine catches more than Halley, her dad, and uncle Gill in its wake. From her home down the street Raina experiences her own metamorphosis. While walking with his mother, Jamie is flung to the ground and wakes up as a girl.
Jamie carries unnamed feelings about girls from the moment we meet him. Bemoaning the absence of his brother, Jamie ambles through a farmyard and fantasizes about making a new friend: “Maybe someone his own age. Maybe a girl…[S]he’d smile down when he looked up at her. But not in that particular way a girl might smile at a boy. Not like that.” He immediately considers his sneakers, hand-me-downs from one of his mom’s friends. Just knowing that they belonged to a teenage girl makes “his stomach feel light.” Afterwards Jamie’s brother calls unexpectedly, mentions his forthcoming visit for Thanksgiving, and invites Jamie to join him for a game of Dungeons & Dragons. He decides to play an elf.
Creating an elf he’d enjoy being suddenly seemed critical. The bewitching smiles of the Japan Airlines flight attendants as they wrote their names and his in Kanji teased him, toyed with his imagination. He remembered what it felt like to put on Julia’s shoes that first time. With a tumble of unbidden feelings he realized he didn’t want his elf monk to be a boy. But what, then? A pretty elf girl, with hair that fell in dark silky curtains, like Keiko from the Japan Airlines jumbo jet…. Do I dare?
Jamie’s reflections imply a desire to quite literally put himself in a girl’s shoes. He’s afforded the opportunity soon enough.
Jamie’s final feelings, private or otherwise, remain a mystery.
Understandably, Jamie suffers extreme confusion and denial at her initial transformation. She questions her reality, wondering if she’ll stay a girl forever, and breaks down sobbing. But as the changes set in, Jamie considers: “[H]adn’t he wondered about this very thing before? And not just as a little figure on a game board.” Despite the shock, she accepts her new body with growing excitement and curiosity. However, it doesn’t take long for self-doubt to threaten her exhilaration. She’s convinced that girls get all the love and can be tougher than boys, but they are silly and “cry for no reason.” Later Jamie thinks that “becoming a girl made all the worst parts of her worse,” then realizes it isn’t a fair assessment. She forces her agitations aside and lets herself feel pretty while examining herself in the mirror. Despite growing more comfortable with her new body, Jamie hopes the changes won’t last. She begins to miss her old self, weaknesses and all. It takes becoming a girl for her to accept who she was as a boy.
Jamie believes she understands girls better due to her experience, but it isn’t entirely clear what she’s learned. The character says she likes girls without ever saying what makes them worthwhile. We know that girls are apparently pretty and beloved, but frivolous and emotional. Even in faithfully representing internalized misogyny, Cools unwittingly presents a cardboard portrait of femininity: flat, surface level, and fairly boring. There are moments that easily could’ve plumbed deeper, such as when Jamie first considers that as a girl she’s jumped from a moving truck: something, she tells herself, that she’d have been incapable of doing as a boy the day before. What does girl Jamie have that boy Jamie lacked? We know that Jamie changed, but–new body parts aside–not exactly how.
Jamie’s return to his original body provides little resolution. Talking to Raina about his forthcoming D&D campaign, Jamie uncomfortably admits to playing a girl. The adult sputters out a laugh. “Wait–she?… Long hair aside, haven’t you had enough of being a girl yet?” The snide remark receives no response, as the two are conveniently interrupted. Jamie’s final feelings, private or otherwise, remain a mystery. Does Jamie dream of becoming a girl permanently? Is he more confused than ever? Is he fully satisfied in his old form? There is nothing wrong, of course, with a complicated conclusion. But it feels as if the author, not merely the characters, are dodging the hard questions. Young readers deserve, and even crave, honesty.
Not only does the author delve into gender without anything interesting to say, it’s also odd–and disturbing–that he presents a gender-swapping story without acknowledging transgender people. Cools so insistently beats around the bush that it’s as if the bush does not exist. This silence is not so much deafening as tone-deaf.
Megan Foster earned an MA in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and has spent several years as a children’s bookseller throughout the Northeast. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two cats.
Light in the Canyon was published by Slant Books on June 23, 2026. Fare Forward appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher here.
