Queer Clues
Queer Clues
Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body is a multi-genre exploration of embodiment
Content Note: This review discusses eating disorders and treatment. It includes light thematic spoilers for this novel, but does not go into detailed plot specifics.
Published in 2021 by Feminist Press imprint Amethyst Editions, Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body is the first novel by Brooklyn-based writer Megan Milks. Set in 1998, it’s a multi-genre exploration of queer girlhood and embodiment.
The novel opens with Margaret, a teenager living in South Chesterfield, Virginia, who has a fondness for Tori Amos and Fiona Apple. Right away, it’s clear that Margaret has a problem with food that she won’t admit to. Instead, her sadness is focused on the loss of Girls Can Solve Anything, a middle-school detective club she once had with her friends.
After the first chapter, which reads like literary fiction, the novel shifts to an actual case from Girls Can Solve Anything. Stylized like a YA story, the case explains how the group came together. It’s the first genre shift in a novel filled with them. While Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body begins straightforwardly, the text morphs along the way to include elements of genre fiction like YA, crime, horror and even video games.
As the genres shift, so do the points of view. Different sections of the book use first, second and third person, and echo Margaret’s feelings about her body. When she is a confident and loud pre-teen, she speaks in the first person. When she is only a few years later, this brassiness is lost and the text is narrated by an omniscient voice.
While Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body pays homage to YA urtexts like The Baby-Sitters Club, these books never explicitly discussed feelings of queerness by their pre-teen protagonists. This novel, set in the same time period, changes that. One of the reasons why Margaret feels so uncomfortable with her body is because she thinks that in order to feel more like a “real” girl, she should be thinner.
Since it’s the late ‘90s, there simply isn’t the language yet to describe how Margaret feels about her gender and sexuality, much less mainstream acceptance (or at least feigned tolerance) of LGBTQ+ people. To the reader, it’s clear that Margaret had romantic feelings as a pre-teen for her friend Gretchen, but didn’t know how to name that. Likewise, when Margaret is placed in a room with Carrie while in treatment for her eating disorder, she doesn’t know what to do with her attraction besides freeze when it’s reciprocated.
Another highlight was the novel’s thematic focus on friendship as the most important relationship in the protagonist’s life. While Margaret’s friendships occasionally bleed into romantic territory, she also highly desires friendships and treats them with great priority and care. The Girls Can Solve Anything club is clearly one of the brightest times in her life, a time when she and her close friends are able to have fun together. When this club dissolves, Margaret is heartbroken.
However, when she is later in treatment for her eating disorder, the friendships she is able to make are what ultimately save her. It was very heartwarming to see this theme taken so seriously, especially in a novel about a young queer person. Still, it’s the final chapter that truly makes this novel soar, a letter written years later where the protagonist reflects on their experience and what it meant.
Between the genre shifts and the exploration of what it means to embody a queer girlhood, Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body isn’t like anything I’ve ever read before. It’s a book that I would have loved to have read as a 16-year-old, a book that could have been a lifeline for me. Luckily it still will be, for many of its readers, both adolescent and adult.
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