While reading Love in Exile, I thought often about a comment that Faye posted on her Instagram account, in which a nameless man speculated that the book would be too “niche” by virtue of its author being trans. One has to wonder whether such a person is committed full-time to reading only work by those who share his gender, sexual orientation, and apparent deficit of empathy and imagination. Regardless, Faye blends the strictly personal with the broadly universal just as seamlessly as if there were no space between the two. The effect of this approach on the reader, if it isn’t too grandiose to say, is a little like the pull of love itself—a state that feels both private and singular, and epic in its scale. {read}