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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
'Things like this never happen. They happen to other people, but not to you, not to me. Not with moody-but-harmless Hunter. Not with the son of your parents' best friends. Not with your best, true, forever friend when you were a kid. Not in sleepy, small town Hemingway. This happens to people in dark alleyways, at night, with strangers. This happens when you're lost in a city. More to the point, this happens to girls. So I've been thinking so far, This isn't happening.'
Max Walker is a golden boy. He's captain of the football team. He's never failed an exam in his life. He lives comfortably as part of a white upper-middle class family in a suburb of Oxford, with his little brother Daniel, Karen, his mother and a high-flying barrister, and his Crown prosecutor father, Steve. There's no doubt that Max is one of the most popular kids in school: every guy wants to be him, and every girl wants to be with him.
But Max has a secret - he's intersex. Being intersex means being born with a reproductive system, chromosomes or genitalia that fall somewhere between the binary of male and female, effectively making you both male and female, but also neither male nor female. Max has a female reproductive system but identifies as male - he doesn't have breasts, and he experienced a course of testosterone shots in his early teens.
The only people that know about Max are his parents, their best friends Leah and Edward and their son Hunter. Hunter and Max have been best friends since they were born - Hunter being only a few months older than Max - and he's always trusted him with his secret.
In the week before Max's sixteenth birthday, Hunter comes in to his room and - as I'm sure you can guess by the quote at the top of this review - he sexually assaults him. Because Max identifies as male and is heterosexual, he's never done anything sexual with a man before: he's terrified, in pain and utterly ashamed by what happens. He blames himself for being intersex, wondering if he's always going to be a curiosity that people feel it's their right to explore.
If you're sensitive to scenes of rape and find it triggering or upsetting, I'd sincerely suggest you skip the first chapter of the book told from Max's perspective. It's harrowing and very distressing, and I don't often get as emotional as I did. I had to put the book down after reading it and have a break, because I was just utterly devastated.
However, I do have to give Abigail Tarttelin credit - she writes it in a sensitive and emotional way, and the scene is not included for the shock value. I felt so upset from reading about it, and it made it impossible not to care for Max. The majority of people won't have had experience with being intersex, but the empathy she evokes puts you straight in his shoes.
Yes, that chapter is awful to read, I'm not denying that. But people always talk about the statistics of transgender and intersex rape: rarely do they tell the story from the victim's perspective. Using a person - a well-rounded, realistic character - is much more effective than listing numbers.
Max deals with the rape extremely maturely.
Read the rest of my review here!
Max Walker is a golden boy. He's captain of the football team. He's never failed an exam in his life. He lives comfortably as part of a white upper-middle class family in a suburb of Oxford, with his little brother Daniel, Karen, his mother and a high-flying barrister, and his Crown prosecutor father, Steve. There's no doubt that Max is one of the most popular kids in school: every guy wants to be him, and every girl wants to be with him.
But Max has a secret - he's intersex. Being intersex means being born with a reproductive system, chromosomes or genitalia that fall somewhere between the binary of male and female, effectively making you both male and female, but also neither male nor female. Max has a female reproductive system but identifies as male - he doesn't have breasts, and he experienced a course of testosterone shots in his early teens.
The only people that know about Max are his parents, their best friends Leah and Edward and their son Hunter. Hunter and Max have been best friends since they were born - Hunter being only a few months older than Max - and he's always trusted him with his secret.
In the week before Max's sixteenth birthday, Hunter comes in to his room and - as I'm sure you can guess by the quote at the top of this review - he sexually assaults him. Because Max identifies as male and is heterosexual, he's never done anything sexual with a man before: he's terrified, in pain and utterly ashamed by what happens. He blames himself for being intersex, wondering if he's always going to be a curiosity that people feel it's their right to explore.
If you're sensitive to scenes of rape and find it triggering or upsetting, I'd sincerely suggest you skip the first chapter of the book told from Max's perspective. It's harrowing and very distressing, and I don't often get as emotional as I did. I had to put the book down after reading it and have a break, because I was just utterly devastated.
However, I do have to give Abigail Tarttelin credit - she writes it in a sensitive and emotional way, and the scene is not included for the shock value. I felt so upset from reading about it, and it made it impossible not to care for Max. The majority of people won't have had experience with being intersex, but the empathy she evokes puts you straight in his shoes.
Yes, that chapter is awful to read, I'm not denying that. But people always talk about the statistics of transgender and intersex rape: rarely do they tell the story from the victim's perspective. Using a person - a well-rounded, realistic character - is much more effective than listing numbers.
Max deals with the rape extremely maturely.
Read the rest of my review here!
Very dramatic, and almost plays into the trope that all LGBTQIA+ people have tragic lives. Also an incredibly big trigger warning for rape/violence, depression, and suicide.
Overall, if I look at the book as its own entity, it was an amazing analysis of the fluidity of gender, and even though it was about an intersex boy, it could valued by cis and trans people alike. Like I said it was very dramatic, and if had lesser quality writing, I probably would have hated it, but Tarttelin is incredibly good at writing an inner personal monologue, and she really plays to that strength. There are about six different characters that have alternating first perspective prose, and they are all well developed and full of life. I loved almost everything about this book! 4.5/5
Overall, if I look at the book as its own entity, it was an amazing analysis of the fluidity of gender, and even though it was about an intersex boy, it could valued by cis and trans people alike. Like I said it was very dramatic, and if had lesser quality writing, I probably would have hated it, but Tarttelin is incredibly good at writing an inner personal monologue, and she really plays to that strength. There are about six different characters that have alternating first perspective prose, and they are all well developed and full of life. I loved almost everything about this book! 4.5/5