Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab is a book I could have liked. On paper, its themes of intersectional trans identity and complex parent-child relationships sound fascinating but Shani Mootoo's framing didn't connect with me.

My first and biggest problem with this story was its narrator, Jonathan. This novel is about the life of an Indo-Trinidadian trans man but is primarily told through the perspective of a cis straight white Canadian. I understand that this was an artistic choice by Mootoo, but Jonathan was an uninteresting character. When not being blatantly transphobic Jonathan's inner life was dull and whiney.

Mootoo's circular narrative structure also didn't do much for me. Like the title suggests time in this book often moves sideways as the narrative rehashes moments and skip around rather than moving linearly from beginning to end. This literary device while something I'm sure I could write a solid academic paper on didn't enhance the story for me.

Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab did have fleeting moments of intrigue, especially when it focused on the perspectives of its queer POC characters, but the vast majority of it just didn't work for me.