A review by _ziyodan
The Performance by Claire Thomas

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No

the transphobia seemed unnecessary, but it also wasn't very good. I liked the premise and don't mind 'plotless' books but I felt like it was done clunkily, and the characters felt more like they had each been given lists of traits which were put in the text rather than fully fleshed out people. anyway aforementioned transphobic passage under the spoiler just cause I haven't seen it mentioned in other reviews!

The nurse reminded them that they were a parents group, not just a mothers group, and that she should probably be known as a parental health nurse, but tradition persists. She was visibly enthused by her own modernity Was she an idiot? Every other adult in the room was a post-natal female. She was right, of course. It is traditional for women to be pregnant, not men. For women to give birth, not men. For women to breastfeed, not men. Please fuck off with your parenting. Can't we be called mothers anymore? Not even when we're perched here with vaginas just healing after weeks of sitting on spiky stitches and oversized clot-catching sanitary napkins? With our breasts dripping blood from grazes and milk from straining ducts? Can't we be what we are, just for a time, before we bring the men back into it? Before we accept this parenting label, as if we're all living in a state of disembodied, post-feminist, gender-blind teamwork?

 The women smiled agreeably at the nurse. only later, when women and they wanted to be agreeable. It was only later, when the nurse left the room, that they made acerbic comments. Look at me parenting, laughed one mother, shoving her enormous breast into her daughter's open mouth My boyfriend's going to come to the next meeting and tell us all his birth story, said another. His poor body is still recovering.