Every Day by David Levithan (Knopf, 2012) is a novel whose main character, A, wakes up every morning in the body of a different person. "The Safe-Deposit Box" by Greg Egan (Asimov's SF, 1990) has the same basic premise, but a very different plot and tone.

In Every Day, A switches bodies every day at midnight -- awake or asleep. (It's not explained whether this is true local midnight, or the arbitrary midnight of the local time zone and adjusted for daylight savings time; it's not that kind of book.) While in a given person's body, A has some degree of access to their knowledge and experiential memories, but not to their skills. After A moves on, their former host usually has vague memories of a fairly uneventful day, but under unusual circumstances they can remember more of what A did while in their body, and this becomes important in the course of the story.

A inhabits the bodies of people of both sexes about equally often, and has (so we're told) no particular gender identity -- they're equally comfortable in girls' and boys' bodies. Their age is always pretty consistent, though. A is sixteen years old, and as long as they can remember they've worn bodies of whatever age they are at the time. They tend to wake up each day in a body fairly near where their previous body fell asleep; they've spent all their life in the English-speaking parts of North America, and have been in Maryland for a good while as the story begins, though they've moved long distances a few times when in the body of someone whose family was moving or traveling.

For years now A has tried to live a low-impact life, trying to fit into each host's daily routine as far as possible, and to act in character for the host so that their family and friends don't suspect anything and so their life won't be disrupted in any way. But one day he falls in love with his present host's girlfriend. This host, Justin, is somewhat abusive (verbally, not physically) of his girlfriend Rhiannon, and A can't bring himself to act in character for Justin; he treats Rhiannon far better than she's used to being treated, and paradoxically makes her fall deeper in love with Justin, whom she was maybe starting to think about breaking up with. After that, A can't resist breaking their other hosts' routines in order to make contact with Rhiannon again and again, to try to influence her to break up with Justin, to try to establish some relationship with her. And that misuse of their hosts' bodies and lives comes back to bite them.

I highly recommend this. The writing is beautiful, the characterization convincing, the plotting tight. The ending is somewhat problematic -- I'll avoid going into detail to avoid spoilers, but though it's plausible and in character, it's not entirely satisfying.

The basic premise, though many critics are raving about it as totally original, is basically the same as that of Greg Egan's short story "The Safe-Deposit Box" (Asimov's SF, September 1990; reprinted in his collection Axiomatic). What each author does with the idea, and the details of how the body-jumping works, are totally different; I'd recommend reading both. In Egan's story, the main character is always a man of about the same age, always in the same city; he switches bodies only when he sleeps, and can stay in the same body longer by forcing himself to stay awake for a couple of days. He says of his childhood:

"Now and then I woke up as a girl, but at some point (around the age of four, I think) this began to trouble me, and soon after that, it simply stopped happening."

Egan's is a science fiction puzzle story where the focus is on the narrator gradually collecting data on his host bodies, trying to figure out something about why he is the way he is, and finally making a breakthrough. The safe-deposit box of the title is where he collects his data; the 1990 equivalent of A's free web email accounts. Levithan's novel focuses on the love story and the ethical problems of living with a series of borrowed bodies and lives, and leaves the question of why A is the way they are unanswered. Both are valid approaches, and reading the two stories as a diptych suggests that there's a lot more life in this story idea.

Links:

• David Levithan's web page for the book
• Greg Egan's bibliography page, with links to purchase ebook editions of Axiomatic (which also includes the more overtly transgender story "Closer" and many other excellent stories).
• Sarah Polsky's review of Every Day
• Episode 32 of The Writer and the Critic podcast where the hosts talk about Every Day, with a few spoilers

When Wasps Make Honey, the sequel to Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes, is now available from Smashwords in EPUB format and Amazon in Kindle format. See here for more information.