When he was two years old, Mitya Noskov --- who was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in Russia --- swallowed a needle. At least according to family lore. This needle never exited and thus conferred upon him either a fragility (from his family’s perspective) or (in his own mind) a shield from harm. This mode of survival, teetering between danger and toughness, comes to characterize Mitya in Katya Kazbek’s LITTLE FOXES TOOK UP MATCHES.

Mitya lives with his gentle mother, his fierce maternal grandmother, and his father, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. They form a tense quartet with Babushka Alyssa running reliable interference between Mitya and the toxic disappointment that his father, Dmitriy Fyodorovich, feels in his effeminate and sensitive son. Mitya has few friends but is a keen observer of the kids and adults around him. One day, while home alone, he puts on some of his mother’s makeup and experiences a profound revelation, seeing himself in the mirror as neither a girl nor a boy. “He was a beautiful woman,” Kazbek writes, “independent and powerful.”

"Against a backdrop of a changed and changing Russia, LITTLE FOXES TOOK UP MATCHES is a lovely debut confronting gender, gender identity and the pursuit of all kinds of justice."

The villain who really challenges Mitya’s beauty, independence and power is not, as first expected, his father, although he is far from kind. Instead, it is his cousin, Vovka. Vovka comes to live with the family when Mitya is 10 years old, after having served in the first Chechen War, where he lost his arm and came home with PTSD that he self-medicates with alcohol. His repeated violence against Mitya is horrific and somehow not unexpected. It becomes a secret that Mitya holds for much of the novel. He has other secrets as well: his devchonka (girl) self, his investigation into the murder of his friend, Valerka, and his friendship with a Ukrainian girl named Marina.

A lot happens in LITTLE FOXES TOOK UP MATCHES, but the plot and narrative are never rushed. Readers follow Mitya as he explores his interior self and the world around him, looking for friendship, safety, truth and acceptance. Even as he suffers abuse at home, Mitya seeks justice for Valerka, which both forces him to confront the unavoidable systemic corruption all around him and challenges him to trust Marina. Despite, or perhaps because of, her own issues and struggles, Marina unconditionally accepts Mitya for who he is, even as he is in the process of understanding it all himself. Both their lives are messy and complicated, full of heartbreak but also potential and possibility. Kazbek is wise to allow that messiness to reign throughout the book, and the conclusion feels real because of it.

Occasional chapters present the folkloric adventures of Koschei the Deathless. Koschei’s tale also involves a hidden needle and encounters with a variety of interesting characters. Clearly meant to highlight aspects of Mitya’s story, these interludes don’t always add a lot to the novel overall.

Against a backdrop of a changed and changing Russia, LITTLE FOXES TOOK UP MATCHES is a lovely debut confronting gender, gender identity and the pursuit of all kinds of justice. Although Kazbek sometimes tells more than she shows, her use of fairy tales and respect for youth culture, the power of music and teen crushes, as well as weightier themes such as trauma, make her first outing a success.