A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

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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