A review by lesserjoke
Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery

3.0

Author Daniel Mallory Ortberg's continual process of trying on and discarding various metaphors to describe his experience with gender dysphoria and transition reminds me of Carmen Maria Machado's masterful In the Dream House, which adopts a similar approach to the topic of domestic abuse. And those parts of this memoir work really well for me, but there's a lot here that feels rather extraneous to Ortberg's own life, with extended riffs on pop culture or scripture and other classical texts that don't always seem wholly relevant. Given that range of topics, I wish this book were structured more like a traditional essay collection, so that I could more easily point to the parts I do and don't like.

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