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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was really looking forward to reading this book, and it did not disappoint-- although it was not quite what I expected. I know in interviews, Peters has said she just wanted to write a funny book for her friends, and I am glad that she did that. It's fun to have a book about complicated, kinda fucked up, normal people who just happen to be queer and trans. The queerness is of course integral to the plot and characters but it is also very normal in a way that is refreshing. I think Peter's does a beautiful job of inviting you into the world and the culture of trans women through her characters.
This really is the core of a novel, peeling back the skin and showing us the depths and inner lives of strangers.
Sometimes this is a difficult read, Amy/Ames and Reese are difficult to like at times, and the projections that each of these women make about motherhood and womanhood and queerness-- well I just don't always agree. But I love that this exists, and it is absolutely a worthwhile read.
This really is the core of a novel, peeling back the skin and showing us the depths and inner lives of strangers.
Sometimes this is a difficult read, Amy/Ames and Reese are difficult to like at times, and the projections that each of these women make about motherhood and womanhood and queerness-- well I just don't always agree. But I love that this exists, and it is absolutely a worthwhile read.
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
library loan was expiring and my reading slump is getting bad
reflective
sad
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
A chaotically queer, messy and provocative character study of two trans women—one detransitioned—and the sort of unusual familial circumstances they are thrust into. Extremely readable, funny and biting, and at times very emotionally reflective. The novel addresses how motherhood and pregnancy intersect with feminine and trans identities, what makes a family—queer or not—and how past relationships and identities continue to shape our future selves and actions.
“I just really do get what it’s like to be fetishized. I get what it’s like to have someone think that his desire for me degrades or lowers him.”
“She would do almost anything to never again be looked at the way those women had looked at her. It wasn’t that they had even been rude. They had simply seen her. Seen a true thing in her that she had spent her life making sure never to show to anyone.”
“We have no elders, no stable groups, no one to teach us to countenance pain. No matriarchs to tell the young girls to knock it off or show off their own long lives lived happily and well. Those older generations of trans women died of HIV, poverty, suicide, repression, or disappeared to pathologized medicalization and stealth lives—and that’s if they were lucky enough to be white. They left behind only scattered exhausted voices to tell the angry lost young when and how the pain might end—to tell us what will be lost when we lash out with our considerable strength, or use the fragile shards of what remain of our social networks to ostracize, punish, and retaliate against those who behave in a traumatized manner.”
“Reese used to say that she was only interested in people who’d had a major failure in life. She believed that one ought to have a singular major failure, in which all of one’s hopes were dashed, in order to sprout a life into something interesting, as pruned trees grow baroque and beautiful, because an unpruned tree only grows vertically and predictably, selfishly sucking up as much sunlight as possible.”
“I just really do get what it’s like to be fetishized. I get what it’s like to have someone think that his desire for me degrades or lowers him.”
“She would do almost anything to never again be looked at the way those women had looked at her. It wasn’t that they had even been rude. They had simply seen her. Seen a true thing in her that she had spent her life making sure never to show to anyone.”
“We have no elders, no stable groups, no one to teach us to countenance pain. No matriarchs to tell the young girls to knock it off or show off their own long lives lived happily and well. Those older generations of trans women died of HIV, poverty, suicide, repression, or disappeared to pathologized medicalization and stealth lives—and that’s if they were lucky enough to be white. They left behind only scattered exhausted voices to tell the angry lost young when and how the pain might end—to tell us what will be lost when we lash out with our considerable strength, or use the fragile shards of what remain of our social networks to ostracize, punish, and retaliate against those who behave in a traumatized manner.”
“Reese used to say that she was only interested in people who’d had a major failure in life. She believed that one ought to have a singular major failure, in which all of one’s hopes were dashed, in order to sprout a life into something interesting, as pruned trees grow baroque and beautiful, because an unpruned tree only grows vertically and predictably, selfishly sucking up as much sunlight as possible.”
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
