Description
Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together? This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.
Fermin Weissnat @wuckert.delphine_662
July 27, 2021
4
I loved this book! While the description might make make the plot seem niche or confusingly complex, the writing is so precise and perceptive, and each of the three main characters so vividly imagined, that a novel that seems to have very specific resonances quickly engaged me and told me a lot about myself (as a straight white cis woman) and the world I live in. Torrey Peters offers a huge number of insights into many aspects of modern womanhood, and she does it entertainingly and respectfully: each of the three leading characters are flawed - sometimes hugely so - but we are never invited to judge, laugh at or dislike them. Instead, everyone is taken seriously and we are invited to see society through their eyes, to walk in their shoes. This book is dedicated to divorced women, and the author draws parallels with the predicament of the trans woman and the divorcee - both have had to rethink their pasts and work towards a better future, with all the challenges these things involve.