Ida
by Alison Evans
Alison Evans is currently doing a PhD in Young Australian Literature, focusing on non-binary gender, bisexual identities and coming out. She writes about people who don’t know what they want, relationships and Melbourne.
Set in Melbourne, her novel is about how choices can make or unmake someone. The main character Ida has recently finished high school and is working in a cafe at a tourist park even though she wants to quit every time she fronts up to work. She stays because the pay is reasonable and she doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.
One complication that Ida has to deal with is that she has the ability to go back in time and change the choices she makes. This is certainly something many of us would love to be able to do, but Ida has habitually recreated her life path so often that complications begin to surface. As she lives out her choices, as small as choosing a different menu dish at a restaurant, she has created alternatives in parallel universes.
Her problems multiply after she sees a shadowy doppelganger of herself. As the multiple incarnations increase in power, things get increasingly out of control. Ida loses control of her ability and she is pushed further away from her ‘home’ universe. “Ida’s moving sideways instead of forward. If she gets too far she’ll be forever wandering, lost in her own lives that are not really her own at all.”
This is a suspenseful tale into the continuous possibilities lives are offered. It echoed through my mind for about a week … every time I had to make a decision about the enormous amount of possibilities presented to us every moment.
I love that some things always stay the same, no matter how hard Ida tries to change them and that sometimes choice is only an illusion. It is also refreshing that many of the characters defy the parameters we put round defining gender.
Lezly Herbert
A Conversation with the Author: Alison Evans 
The publicity literature says that you are currently doing a PhD in Young Australian Literature – focusing on non-binary gender, bisexual identities and coming out. How is that coming along?
It’s shifted recently to be mostly about gender identity and self-determination. It’s a pretty heavy topic but something I really love exploring and so being able to read and write about it is really rewarding!
Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse Five is constantly present. Was this become an inspiration for you?
Slaughterhouse Five was something I tried to emulate a little with Ida. It’s science fiction but it’s also not. I think it does some really cool stuff with genre mashups. It’s very rooted in contemporary “real” life and that’s what I wanted Ida to be, something that had these fantastic elements to it but still talked about the details of ordinary life.
And the apple?
I was working at a fruit farm at the time I wrote the first draft of Ida for seven days a week. So fruit was a huge part of my life, whether I wanted it to be or not! That probably subconsciously seeped into the book in the form of the apple, I think.
I love that some things always stay the same, no matter how hard Ida tries to change them. What pivotal moment in your life would you like to go back and change?
A lot of people have asked me this and I really don’t know, honestly. My life is pretty great and I can’t see any huge forks that I would go back to. This is the boring answer, haha, but it’s true.
I can’t remember if it was you that made the comment that aliens don’t have genitals. Your use of gender-fluid characters is great but, as a reader, I sometimes get confused by the use of the plural pronoun for a character who identifies as non-binary. Surely there is something better out there. What are your thoughts?
I do talk about aliens a lot on twitter, though what I usually talk about is how it’s frustrating and confusing that they’re almost always written to use the same gender system as humans. It makes no sense to me. Why would aliens, who have different physiologies and cultures and values use the same weird and constricting gender binary that we do? Not every culture on Earth does, so why should aliens? And the use of the singular they pronoun can be confusing at first, but it’s used a lot in everyday life.
If someone gets a phone call in your presence, you could ask them “Oh, what did they want?” or if someone else answers the door, same thing. When you’re consciously asked to use the singular they for someone it can seem a bit confronting, because you’ve been told that “they” means more than one. But the singular they crops up everywhere, all the time. I use the singular they pronoun for myself, and a lot of people I know do so as well. I know non-binary people who use other pronouns that aren’t she or he, such as xe, ze and so on. I wouldn’t say that they are better options, there is no scale ranking the use of pronouns. Diversity within the trans community is real and so our use of pronouns (new or not) is diverse. Everyone’s choices are valid, and it’s important that we respect that.
Lezly Herbert
