Reviews tagging 'Drug abuse'

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

10 reviews

mochimustreads's review

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challenging emotional reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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lovegriefandgender's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

It's tough being trans. As I was reading Detransition, Baby a 16-year old trans girl was murdered in London, and unable to articulate so much rush of feeling I turned hungrily, savagely back to the pages of the book. It seems to be a place, being trans, of endless longing and therefore endless loss, where we are summoned to question our own pain and circular motions and regret and suffering against any other group who had experienced any of those things. I don't think we're brave. Not really. I think we live in an interrogated space, a grey space, where no future can be known as fact.  Then we have to ask what we want: motherhood? Career? Love? Sex? Most of us would be happy just to have something meaningful to say. Yeah. This is where we live. 

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eleanorcd's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was a great book. It is a fascinating examination of gender and what it means to be a woman. 

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thewordsdevourer's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

what a read. detransition, baby is a relevatory and provocative novel, one which i delight in its intriguing premise, great execution, brilliant emotional characterization and telling of a trans experience.

peters incisively and grippingly examines motherhood, the trans experience, gender, identity politics, sex and sex work in this book, stripping layer upon layer of complexity thats enmeshed in a dash of political correctness, making her characters bare all, voicing taboos and things that are oft unspoken - representational politics be damned - to exhilarating effect. indeed, there were moments that simply stupefied me of how good this book is. and i learned a lot abt transness, this book having depicted in a humane sense many terms i merely know of but have never truly understood in depth.

meanwhile, the characters (and esp reese) are a hot mess - in a sense that theyre all each deep in a certain level of shit - specifically life shit - and trying to navigate thru a surprise pregnancy in different ways, each forced to face their own issues in the process. the ability to make readers empathize w/ characters who they sometimes also want to throttle is certainly a hallmark of a great writer, but peters, imo, goes above and beyond here. this esp pertains to ames/amy, whose story connects w/ me in a visceral way; we couldnt be more different, but her story deeply affects me in a way fiction rarely ever does, reading it was def sth else. it's indeed a lil baffling that her accidental outing plotline's suddenly dropped near the end: whatever happens after katrina's advice-seeking w/ reese and her friends? whats ames' reaction upon finding out the company supposedly knowing her secret? 

and the book's last 15% and ending are less stellar than the rest, imo. the former feels awkward to me, like the author's trying to tie it all up but ends up veering into a slightly strange territory. i also wish we heard more from ames aside from that bit near the end. as for the ending, it does annoy me w/ how vague and slightly ~kumbaya~ it is, its tone a lil jarring w/ the book's irreverent tone.

even so, this is an undeniably thought-provoking, impactful, and even humorous novel, one that reads like a queer classic, and an amazing and welcoming addition to mainstream trans lit.

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mayan03's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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shirtypantser's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.75

The writing is good, the story is not. 

The premise is stupid (I don't say that lightly), the two trans characters are unlikeable and one is unredeemable. Racism, sexism both present on a regular basis in this. Author went pretty deep on fetishes but didn't quite pull off the point I think they were going for. I'm horrified this book is out there representing the trans fem community. This book gives the impression it was written by someone that doesn't actually like or much respect trans women.

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lydiaie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75


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bookishnatalia's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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moonyreadsbystarlight's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Reviewing this book is really difficult because there is just so much that went on in this book. This could be seen as a character study, a study on a theme, and a study on a community. It's about how much a person (or a community) has to be situated in context -- not just the context of the past, but also the present, and with space for the future. This was a messy book about messy characters in messy situations and its reflective of how messy reality really is and how complicated people are. There were aspects of the book that one could critique, certainly, but I think it all adds in to this theme of life and people being messy and complicated. I do think that parts of this book will read really differently for queer people than trans people. Parts of this book are really unapologetically trans -- you don't get the 101 and if you aren't aware of the culture, you may be a little lost. But there are other parts where it is directly about the cishet community. The whole book really acts as a conversation about community, but also about gender (gender at large, but also specifically Ames/Amy's gender), about motherhood and the need to be mothered. This is such a complex and interesting book. I could see it not being for everyone, but I really enjoyed it and found it so fascinating. I'm already planning a reread to unpack it more eventually. The only thing I was really unsure about was some of the conversation about race. Some of it did seem good, but some of the comparisons that happened, I would like to see some biracial trans perspectives on

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whatjaimereads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Detransition, Baby follows the story of two and a half women, their joint foray into the world of queer parenting, and what it means to be yourself when that self is an interloper to society.
The discussions within this book around gender, fetishisation, and parenthood are handled fluidly, and sensitively, and are unique to any other queer fiction that I’ve read. Peters has written deeply realistic, multi-faceted characters that each offer their own insight into the struggles faced by marginalised communities. This novel is driven by its characters and discussions of their flaws, and it visibly benefits from the author’s Own Voice perspective as a queer woman. 
However, this insight comes with the weight of knowledge that the reflections in Detransition, Baby are true-to-life. There is a huge amount of graphic, sensitive content, and some of the storytelling can become over-indulgent within these areas. Our cast of characters are all suffering from deep trauma in their past/present, which makes for some really heavy reading. By about chapter 9 I was completely emotionally exhausted, so I urge you to proceed with caution. 
This is not the book that I was expecting from its synopsis, but it probes some really important topics, and for that reason it is undeniably an important read. 
*ARC gifted by Serpents Tail in exchange for an honest review*

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