Torrey Peters
Teoksen Detransition, Baby tekijä
Tekijän teokset
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Kanoninen nimi
- Peters, Torrey
- Syntymäaika
- 1982
- Sukupuoli
- female
- Kansalaisuus
- USA
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
My opinion is divided against itself because on the one hand this is a really thought provoking novel about gender and the experience of being trans, and on the other hand I couldn’t believe the major plot line for even a New York minute and so I didn’t really care how the plot developed, which made for some reluctance to return to the book. 5 stars for characterization, 1 star for plot.
I appreciated learning things such as “flagrantly gay brands such as Delta Airlines and Hyundai” (who knew?), or more seriously, this arresting description of a trans character experiencing sex as their birth gender prior to transitioning:
Sometimes the authorial attempt to teach readers something made it seem more like I was reading a long form essay, which was fine, though it interrupted the narrative momentum. Sometimes it was highly unnecessary: yes, anyone reading this novel surely knows about the anti-trans bathroom bills, and is highly likely to be opposed to such laws already. Other times it was with a tinge of humor:
And then there’s the main plot. I cannot, cannot, imagine a pregnant woman behaving like Katrina does. Being willing to “co-mom” when her lover reveals to her that, surprise, he used to be a trans woman and would like his trans ex-girlfriend to be the baby’s mother too? To the extent that she’s willing to send her infant away to this previously unknown other woman’s home for half the time? If it’s a failure of imagination on my part, then so be it, but, I can’t.
The most sense the novel made on this point was Reese’s first reaction: “Yes, go ask this other woman, Katrina, to split her unborn child with a transsexual. I fully expect that she will murder you for the suggestion...” Yes, that would have made more sense. The second most sense the novel made on this point was when Ames recognized “he had always been scared of Reese’s men”, such as the one who assaulted him and broke his nose. So why would you invite Reese’s expected future violent relationship interests into your child’s life?
The plot’s a big failure for me, which is a shame because the two main characters of Reese and Amy/Ames are well drawn. If only they’d been the center of a different novel. The writing, as can be expected of a debut novel, is uneven, but often quite good.
… (lisätietoja)
I appreciated learning things such as “flagrantly gay brands such as Delta Airlines and Hyundai” (who knew?), or more seriously, this arresting description of a trans character experiencing sex as their birth gender prior to transitioning:
It took her a while to understand the cyclical loneliness of disappearing in dissociation during sex. That people have sex for a shared joy that keeps an existential loneliness at bay, so when she disappeared inside of herself, her more experienced partners sensed that absence and her disappearance hurt them. Since she dreaded hurting those she most wanted to connect with, she grew to dread and avoid sex with specifically those most-liked people. And of course, clearly dreading having to have sex with a person only hurt that person more and drove them away—concluding in a final angst in which the loneliness that had made her want to connect with someone in the first place returned upon her tenfold with every attempt to have sex.
Sometimes the authorial attempt to teach readers something made it seem more like I was reading a long form essay, which was fine, though it interrupted the narrative momentum. Sometimes it was highly unnecessary: yes, anyone reading this novel surely knows about the anti-trans bathroom bills, and is highly likely to be opposed to such laws already. Other times it was with a tinge of humor:
Thalia was a former drag queen turned transsexual, one of the earliest converts in the Great Drag Enlightenment, when a significant quorum of Brooklyn’s queens came out as trans, began to inject estrogen, and renounced their gay past, the consequences of which miffed them into misandry, as the desperately cute twinks who used to sleep with them no longer would.
And then there’s the main plot. I cannot, cannot, imagine a pregnant woman behaving like Katrina does. Being willing to “co-mom” when her lover reveals to her that, surprise, he used to be a trans woman and would like his trans ex-girlfriend to be the baby’s mother too? To the extent that she’s willing to send her infant away to this previously unknown other woman’s home for half the time? If it’s a failure of imagination on my part, then so be it, but, I can’t.
The most sense the novel made on this point was Reese’s first reaction: “Yes, go ask this other woman, Katrina, to split her unborn child with a transsexual. I fully expect that she will murder you for the suggestion...” Yes, that would have made more sense. The second most sense the novel made on this point was when Ames recognized “he had always been scared of Reese’s men”, such as the one who assaulted him and broke his nose. So why would you invite Reese’s expected future violent relationship interests into your child’s life?
The plot’s a big failure for me, which is a shame because the two main characters of Reese and Amy/Ames are well drawn. If only they’d been the center of a different novel. The writing, as can be expected of a debut novel, is uneven, but often quite good.
… (lisätietoja)
I absolutely loved this! So heartbreakingly raw and real. More thoughts when I'm not insomnia brained.
Listat
Palkinnot
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Two desires/points of criticism:
1. I wish Katrina had been given more interiority, though, to be fair, I do not think I can separate my desire for that as a reader, pure and simple, from the implicit TERF criticism that I can hear in the back of my mind, of this book's treatment of Katrina. (I want to be clear: the kind of TERF-y criticism I can imagine and suspect exists readily in certain unpleasant corners is, at best, an exceedingly ungenerous reading of this novel).
2. I do wish that trans people who break the rules, people who move through the world in a more actively nonbinary way--in the novel's vocabulary, the Babses of the world, were more present in this novel.