Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
emotional
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
The reason I know of this book is because I learnt they were making a film adaption of it, and when I read the synopsis, that was enough to hook me in. It's pretty sad, but I've never read actually read any books dealing with transgender issues (and I have no idea why because I am extremely interested in books that deal with issues like that), so when I read this novel dealt with the first official sex change in history, it made me even more drawn to it. I also found it fascinating that it was Einar's wife in particular, that encouraged him to transition into Lili. Their relationship was super interesting to me.
This book isn't exactly a difficult book to finish, but it took me awhile to get through. Maybe it was because I'm a mood reader, and I can only get into books when I'm engrossed in them, but that doesn't change the fact that I really enjoyed it! The Greta and Einar/Lili relationship was definitely the most fascinating part of this novel. I think Greta's amazing. She's such a headstrong character, but she's always there supporting Einar/Lili (aside from the end), because she knew from the start that this would be what would make Lili the happiest in the end. Einar/Lili is obviously an extremely courageous character...and I really loved how Ebershoff handled these two vastly different characters that shared the same body. Einar and Lili had very distinct personalities, and were always written like they were two separate characters, which they really were. I get a bit squeamish when it comes to reading about medical procedures and blood, so those parts of the novel had my toes curling a bit, but that's really my own issue.
I do kind of wish that the transition process had been described a little bit more. I felt like that was a little skimmed over. As well as the relationship that blossomed between Lili and Henrik. I liked that, but I wish their relationship had been fleshed out a lot more because it seems a bit tacked on. I also felt that the end was a bit rushed? It was quite hard to read the end since, if you know the real life Einar's story you know what ended up happening, but I feel like the end was left a bit too vague. I don't mind vague endings, but it didn't feel like there was enough closure, so it didn't feel finished somehow. I liked Ebershoff's writing for the most part, but I do think he was a little heavy handed on the metaphors too. Personally, when things are too descriptive it can come off as a bit tedious for me, but like I said, the novel was fairly easy to follow in general.
Overall, I liked this novel. I'm really excited to see how they handle it in the screen depiction because I think that since it was as descriptive as it was, it'll make quite a nice, visual story. It has definitely encouraged me to read more books revolving around transgender issues as well, since it's something that society in general (including me) needs to be more informed about as a whole.
3.5/5
This book isn't exactly a difficult book to finish, but it took me awhile to get through. Maybe it was because I'm a mood reader, and I can only get into books when I'm engrossed in them, but that doesn't change the fact that I really enjoyed it! The Greta and Einar/Lili relationship was definitely the most fascinating part of this novel. I think Greta's amazing. She's such a headstrong character, but she's always there supporting Einar/Lili (aside from the end), because she knew from the start that this would be what would make Lili the happiest in the end. Einar/Lili is obviously an extremely courageous character...and I really loved how Ebershoff handled these two vastly different characters that shared the same body. Einar and Lili had very distinct personalities, and were always written like they were two separate characters, which they really were. I get a bit squeamish when it comes to reading about medical procedures and blood, so those parts of the novel had my toes curling a bit, but that's really my own issue.
I do kind of wish that the transition process had been described a little bit more. I felt like that was a little skimmed over. As well as the relationship that blossomed between Lili and Henrik. I liked that, but I wish their relationship had been fleshed out a lot more because it seems a bit tacked on. I also felt that the end was a bit rushed? It was quite hard to read the end since, if you know the real life Einar's story you know what ended up happening, but I feel like the end was left a bit too vague. I don't mind vague endings, but it didn't feel like there was enough closure, so it didn't feel finished somehow. I liked Ebershoff's writing for the most part, but I do think he was a little heavy handed on the metaphors too. Personally, when things are too descriptive it can come off as a bit tedious for me, but like I said, the novel was fairly easy to follow in general.
Overall, I liked this novel. I'm really excited to see how they handle it in the screen depiction because I think that since it was as descriptive as it was, it'll make quite a nice, visual story. It has definitely encouraged me to read more books revolving around transgender issues as well, since it's something that society in general (including me) needs to be more informed about as a whole.
3.5/5
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
It seemed to me there were so many unaddressed complex issues that a story like this could have addressed, but the author chose not to do so. More than once, I couldn't really believe in the storytelling as the author, David Ebershoff, is neither a woman nor a male to female trans woman. This story felt as though Ebershoff tried yet failed to successfully put himself in the shoes of Lili and Greta.
"In the afternoon, when the sun beat against the Widow House, a faint smell of herring would seep from its walls" and in this house, with the faint smell of herring, we meet Einar, Greta, and Lili. Einar and Greta are painters, married, and settled in their routine. Together, in adjoining skylights of their home at the Widow House, they paint. He paints pictures of the bogs of rural Denmark and she paints mediocre portraits. Lili is the beautiful woman that changes their lives and the settled future they had planned.
The book follows the transformation of Einar from a sickly, small painter to the woman he has always had within him. After a portrait sitting, where Einar had to don a dress and stocking in place of another model, Lili starts awakening from inside him. With every breathe she takes, Einar becomes father and father away. Eventually, Einar and Greta must choose who gets to live: Einar or Lili, the woman he wants to be.
Their story unfolds chronologically, the book segmented into different locations in linear years. Einar, Greta, and Lili's story then travels cyclically throughout this time line, brushing back to both Einar and Greta's childhoods and Lili's early emerging. Throughout the book descriptions are like sinking into a warm bath, fully immersing the reader into the slowly unfolding events. Each chapter illustrates another small tableau of their lives, which the reader gets to piece together into the plot themselves. Each scene begets new questions: Will Einar choose to become fully Lili? Will Greta help him transform? Is it even possibly to go from man to woman?
These questions are not abstracts, but the real questions Lili Elbe, the woman the story was based off of, had to answer. Elbe was the first transgender woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. She is the one who has left behind the newspaper clippings of her gender journey, fragments of her diaries and correspondence, and her autobiography Man into Woman in which this book is based on. However, The Danish Girl is more fiction than fact in the portrayal of her life.
While the bare bones of the story are Lili's, Ebershoff has tried to breath a new life into Lili's story creating new backgrounds, events, and emotions as a memorial and testament to her name. One prominent inconsistency is the change of Einar's real life wife Gerda Wegner, a Danish painter suspected to identify as lesbian, into Greta Waud, a Californian painter with a chip on her should and a dead ex-husband. While this change allowed Ebershoff to identify more readily with the character and past, he originally hauls from Pasadena, CA, he also changes the dynamic between Einar and Greda. Was she truly fighting the idea of losing her loving husband in order for Lili to emerge or was she a bohemian painter that also lived the LGBT life and understood what it meant to be unconventional.
Along this same vein, Ebershoff creates ambiguity on what it means to be transgender. Many scenes include Einar seeking medical reasons for while he feels more like a "she" than a "he." While these scenes lead into an interesting take on how academics understood gender in the early half of the twentieth century, it also leads to conclusions that cast Lili as a physiological anomaly. Today, we know that these feelings are not caused by just physical inconsistencies, but by the belief of a gender identity that does not correspond with the gender identity assigned at birth through the genital individuals were born with. Falling on historical adherence leads for readers to make the same conclusions they made in this time era of transgender people as abnormalities instead of individuals showing a legitimate display of their gender identity.
There is one mention of another who is a trans woman in the book, Sieglinde Tannenhaus, but her appearance is fleeting and her character used as a while to show Professor Bolk as a man seeking the opportunity to try experimental sex reassignment surgery on. Ebershoff could have included a character this character as a means to show that these individuals, while both transgender, have their own identity and own journey of transition. Or Ebershoff could have included any character from the LGBT community to share in solidarity with Lili's transition. Instead, we have a story that focus on Lili's transition and how it affects Greta, who has been recast as a heterosexual facing the idea that her husband is now a woman. If Gerda was closer to her real-life equivalent there may have been question of if Lili and Gerda would have started a homosexual partnership, but with her new recasting she falls in love with another man and leaves Lili. Instead, we must accept the fact that Greta could never have loved Lili and Lili could never have loved Greta because they were both woman and woman could not, in this book, love other woman. This can be seen in the scene where Einar physically recoil at the phrase "Lesbianne" throw at him by young boys; he recoils at the idea because he is not the woman he wants to be and, if he was, he would certainly not be homosexual. While this book breaks down the idea of gender and what it means to be male or female, it holds firm that all sexualities must be heterosexual.
However, for a book written in 2000 where transgender characters rarely made an appearance in mainstream media, it helped start a conversation on what it means to be transgender. The book, far from perfect and dated, is an descriptive delve into a mind of someone the public might never have heard of otherwise. Hopefully, it is the first, and not the last look, at the stories of trans individuals that the reader will read. After reading this book, I recommend diving into books that depict trans individuals and others on the LGBT community , preferably written by who identify as such, to learn more about these individuals lives and their lives.
The book follows the transformation of Einar from a sickly, small painter to the woman he has always had within him. After a portrait sitting, where Einar had to don a dress and stocking in place of another model, Lili starts awakening from inside him. With every breathe she takes, Einar becomes father and father away. Eventually, Einar and Greta must choose who gets to live: Einar or Lili, the woman he wants to be.
Their story unfolds chronologically, the book segmented into different locations in linear years. Einar, Greta, and Lili's story then travels cyclically throughout this time line, brushing back to both Einar and Greta's childhoods and Lili's early emerging. Throughout the book descriptions are like sinking into a warm bath, fully immersing the reader into the slowly unfolding events. Each chapter illustrates another small tableau of their lives, which the reader gets to piece together into the plot themselves. Each scene begets new questions: Will Einar choose to become fully Lili? Will Greta help him transform? Is it even possibly to go from man to woman?
These questions are not abstracts, but the real questions Lili Elbe, the woman the story was based off of, had to answer. Elbe was the first transgender woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. She is the one who has left behind the newspaper clippings of her gender journey, fragments of her diaries and correspondence, and her autobiography Man into Woman in which this book is based on. However, The Danish Girl is more fiction than fact in the portrayal of her life.
While the bare bones of the story are Lili's, Ebershoff has tried to breath a new life into Lili's story creating new backgrounds, events, and emotions as a memorial and testament to her name. One prominent inconsistency is the change of Einar's real life wife Gerda Wegner, a Danish painter suspected to identify as lesbian, into Greta Waud, a Californian painter with a chip on her should and a dead ex-husband. While this change allowed Ebershoff to identify more readily with the character and past, he originally hauls from Pasadena, CA, he also changes the dynamic between Einar and Greda. Was she truly fighting the idea of losing her loving husband in order for Lili to emerge or was she a bohemian painter that also lived the LGBT life and understood what it meant to be unconventional.
Along this same vein, Ebershoff creates ambiguity on what it means to be transgender. Many scenes include Einar seeking medical reasons for while he feels more like a "she" than a "he." While these scenes lead into an interesting take on how academics understood gender in the early half of the twentieth century, it also leads to conclusions that cast Lili as a physiological anomaly. Today, we know that these feelings are not caused by just physical inconsistencies, but by the belief of a gender identity that does not correspond with the gender identity assigned at birth through the genital individuals were born with. Falling on historical adherence leads for readers to make the same conclusions they made in this time era of transgender people as abnormalities instead of individuals showing a legitimate display of their gender identity.
There is one mention of another who is a trans woman in the book, Sieglinde Tannenhaus, but her appearance is fleeting and her character used as a while to show Professor Bolk as a man seeking the opportunity to try experimental sex reassignment surgery on. Ebershoff could have included a character this character as a means to show that these individuals, while both transgender, have their own identity and own journey of transition. Or Ebershoff could have included any character from the LGBT community to share in solidarity with Lili's transition. Instead, we have a story that focus on Lili's transition and how it affects Greta, who has been recast as a heterosexual facing the idea that her husband is now a woman. If Gerda was closer to her real-life equivalent there may have been question of if Lili and Gerda would have started a homosexual partnership, but with her new recasting she falls in love with another man and leaves Lili. Instead, we must accept the fact that Greta could never have loved Lili and Lili could never have loved Greta because they were both woman and woman could not, in this book, love other woman. This can be seen in the scene where Einar physically recoil at the phrase "Lesbianne" throw at him by young boys; he recoils at the idea because he is not the woman he wants to be and, if he was, he would certainly not be homosexual. While this book breaks down the idea of gender and what it means to be male or female, it holds firm that all sexualities must be heterosexual.
However, for a book written in 2000 where transgender characters rarely made an appearance in mainstream media, it helped start a conversation on what it means to be transgender. The book, far from perfect and dated, is an descriptive delve into a mind of someone the public might never have heard of otherwise. Hopefully, it is the first, and not the last look, at the stories of trans individuals that the reader will read. After reading this book, I recommend diving into books that depict trans individuals and others on the LGBT community , preferably written by who identify as such, to learn more about these individuals lives and their lives.
The two stars are because it's beautifully written, but no more because the author's portrayal just seems like it's written by someone who has never met a trans person in their life.
This was entertaining enough, I guess. However, I take issue with how Lili's transition was portrayed as a split personality condition, complete with Einar not remember what happened while Lili was present and vise-versa. I don't have any personal experience in this subject, but I don't think that's how it goes. Also, it seemed odd that in this time period, EVERYONE close to Einar was cool with Lili. I would think the men, especially, would not have gone so readily along with everything, at the very least.
I didn't care for the ending of the book and would have preferred a more definite ending, as there is in the movie (and real life).
That all said, I would like the read the book actually written by Lili.
I didn't care for the ending of the book and would have preferred a more definite ending, as there is in the movie (and real life).
That all said, I would like the read the book actually written by Lili.
This was a very easy, engrossing read that was well written and interesting. I wish I had chosen to read it at a time where I could have just sat down and finished it, but I think due to the stop/start nature of my reading habits recently, I think I possibly lost a little of the emotional impact of it.
Despite that though, I found the characters (and they are characters - the names are based on real people but many of the facts/actions and particulars are fictionalised) to be multi-dimensional and real, for good and for bad and that was a good thing. I very much enjoyed it.
Despite that though, I found the characters (and they are characters - the names are based on real people but many of the facts/actions and particulars are fictionalised) to be multi-dimensional and real, for good and for bad and that was a good thing. I very much enjoyed it.