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    Annabel
    Annabel
    Annabel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Annabel

    Written by Kathleen Winter

    Narrated by Tandy Cronyn

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Kathleen Winter's poignant debut novel was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In it, Winter explores society's views of gender identity through the eyes of a child born with male and female sex organs. At their doctor's urging, the Blakes decide to raise their child as a boy, Wayne, giving him hormones to suppress his feminine physical traits. But after discovering the secret about his body, Wayne decides to stop taking his medication and lets his body develop naturally. "A compelling, gracefully written novel ."-Kirkus Reviews
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateSep 16, 2011
    ISBN9781461804406
    Annabel

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    Reviews for Annabel

    4/5

    366 ratings55 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The aspect of this book that makes it most beautiful to me is the subtlety of the characters and the prose. Situations that I haven't the faintest idea what it would be like to be in are painted with great empathy, precision and detail but made to feel familiar, never made to sound far away or overly exotic. It's incredible the way that Kathleen Winter always sounds so natural, the prose feels alive like the characters or the setting. It's very rare for writing to feel this heartfelt and yet simple for four hundred and sixty pages. The main character is brilliantly real, and I am certain that many people will find Wayne to be one of the select cast of characters that remain embedded in your subconscious for years after you finish the book. I got this book out of the school library because my friends were all on a school trip and I didn't have anything to read. Little over a week later, I am infinitely grateful for me happening to pick this up.
    • 4/5
      I finished Annabel this morning and while I liked it very much indeed......it seemed to wrap up rather quickly for me. Things were unfinished that bothered me but more at home with the parents than with Wayne/Annabel. Treadway's change was rather remarkable but I knew he was a softy all along, just a rather gruff one. This book just pulls one along and keeps you for the long haul with just a couple of hiccups. I think I would give it a solid 4 stars.
    • 5/5
      Totally blown away.You will either love it or hate it. I loved it.
    • 4/5
      What can I say? I loved this book. Firstly, Winter does a great job setting the scene. I have never actually been to Newfoundland or Labrador but I feel like I have walked down its streets and met its people. Secondly, the characters were real and likeable. She let them tell the story and as a result it flowed well. I find east coast literature in general tends to be quite dark but this one wasn't. Winter was able to take a difficult subject and put an interesting spin on it. She managed to keep the overall tone quite light without losing the seriousness of the story. You come out of the story feeling a sense of hope for Wayne/Annabel.This one is definitely recommended.
    • 4/5
      When a baby is born, the first question anyone asks is “Boy or girl?” It is accepted that gender is the most important thing about the child, before questions like “Healthy?””All limbs and digits present?” or “Brain inside skull properly?” No, the shape of the genitals is the most important thing to society.In 1968, in a barely populated area of Labrador, a baby is born to Jacinta and Treadway Blake. Born in the bathtub with three neighbor women in attendance, only one person, Thomasina, notices that the child is not quite the same as most babies. This child has both penis and vagina. With the exception of the parents and Thomasina, no one in the area knows the child’s secret. Treadway names the baby Wayne, declares it will be raised as a boy, and not long after, the vagina is sewn shut. Treadway, a man who spends the better part of the year running trap lines in the wild forests of Labrador and lives a basic, homesteading life, goes out of his way to teach Wayne to be a man of the same sort: tying knots, trapping, reading sign, skinning and preserving pelts, snowmobiling. He fears any sign of femininity in Wayne; the facts that the child’s best- only- same age friend is a girl and that s/he prefers reading and drawing to rebuilding engines provokes Treadway to doing something that severs the friendship between Wayne and the friend. What Treadway doesn’t know is that for several years, Thomasina, as Wayne’s school teacher, nurtured the interests that weren’t “male” and provided a safe person for Wayne to talk to- and at one point, saves Wayne’s life. Treadway is a decent man. He is not mean or nasty or even a misogynist. He simply knows that life will be easier for Wayne if there is no question as to gender. And life is easier for men than for women. Still, I had a very hard time empathizing with Treadway. Despite his love for Wayne, he cannot see gender as anything other than a strict binary. Jacinta is a dim character, not fully realized. Thomasina is the liveliest of the adults. Almost too good to be true, she is open to most everything in a way that the other residents aren’t. The location itself is a character; it is brought up frequently and shapes the people and their lives. It’s almost like another book is inserted into Annabel’s tale; there is the story of Wayne/Annabel, and there is the story of the land, and, to a degree, Treadway’s relationship with it. Sometimes the stories intersect; most often they do not. The story of the land is achingly beautiful, but I found myself wondering at times why it was in that book. This is Wayne/Annabel’s coming of age story, but it’s also a late coming of age for Treadwell, Jacinta, and Thomasina. Wayne/Annabel is not a girl in a boy’s body, as some seem to think, but both male/female in both body and soul, and this is still a hard situation to live in today; think how hard it would have been in the 1970s, especially in a rural area. The writing itself is beautiful, especially in the descriptive passages. But the characters could have used more work, and the book could have lost some of its size and gained focus. When considered as a first novel, though,, it’s a stupendous achievement, and I can’t wait to see what Winter does next.
    • 5/5
      Annabel is a beautiful novel that captures the confusion, sadness, love and hope of a family of an intersex child. Born in Labrador, Wayne's parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a close family friend, Thomasina are the only ones who know about Wayne's "secret". When Wayne reaches puberty, however, he learns about himself and begins to understand why he always felt different.I loved this novel. The characters were well-rounded and complex. The relationship between Wayne's parents, Jacinta and Treadway felt real; the tension between them was expressed through silence and the secrets they kept from one another. Wayne's and Wally's (a female childhood friend of Wayne's) friendship was magical and fell apart as some childhood friendships do.I think that Winter did an amazing job crafting a story about a difficult subject matter. I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys novels about self-discovery and family drama.
    • 5/5
      Kathleen Winter earned a literary trifecta, securing spots on all three major Canadian fiction prize shortlists, in 2010. Winter’s novel Annabel was a contender for The Giller Prize, The Governor General's Award for Literature and The Writer’s Trust Award. Winter’s book, her debut novel, was the only one contending for all three awards and it is a stunningly beautiful book.

      From the jacket description: In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret — the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows to adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self — a girl he thinks of as Annabel — is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. Haunting, sweeping in scope, and stylistically reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, Annabel is a compelling debut novel about one person’s struggle to discover the truth in a culture that shuns contradiction.”

      Annabel offers some hard themes for readers. It is the story of an intersex child born in a remote coastal Labrador village in 1968. Primarily, I feel, Winter has written an homage to self-determination and self-preservation. An intersex child is born with atypical reproductive anatomy – both male and female anatomy are present. Advocates for intersex infants argue against surgical alterations of gentalia and reproductive organs being performed in order to accommodate societal expectations of what it means to be male or female in the world. This choice forms the centre of Winter’s novel.

      Jacinta Blake gives birth, in her bathtub, at home. Her closest friend, Thomasina, is assisting with the birth. Thomasina is the first one who notices the baby has both male and female genitals. She immediately begins to refer to the child as Annabel, in tribute to her own daughter who has recently died. Jacinta’s husband, Treadway, feels strongly the child should be raised male while Jacinta (and Thomasina) feel love for the daughter, Annabel. The infant, “Wayne”, receives surgery to make his body appear more fully male. He is also started on a regiment of hormones to keep his body more male than female. All of this is kept from Wayne while he is growing up but he is always aware of not feeling whole as he is. Thomasina, however, addresses the child as Annabel, when they are together privately.

      In an interview for House of Anansi Press, Kathleen Winter was asked, “What do you hope readers will take away from their experience with Wayne and his shadow-self, Annabel?”
      “I’d like readers to see Wayne/Annabel the way they see themselves, and look at the “other” gender within themselves. I feel point of view is everything, in life and in literature, and I hope the book treats the points of view held by its divergent characters with equal respect. In many ways, this book is, for me, about suspending judgment. When you understand why someone acts the way they do, even if the actions cause sadness or difficulty, then I think you can redirect your energy to something more fruitful than judgment. I also hope the reader will have the kind of reading experience I think books are really about: a connection with the characters and a suspension of the loneliness of being human. I hope this story, like all good stories, might give the reader a kind of relief and a joy.”
      Winter set a large task for herself with Annabel. I feel she achieved perhaps more than she could have hoped for. Winter has created a wonderfully memorable story and Annabel (the character) is such a beautiful portrait of what it means to be human. Through Winter’s ability the reader feels the sadness, the loneliness but also the strength and the hope.
    • 4/5
      Really beautiful coming of age story. Written with a stark simplicity in keeping with the setting. Loved the complexity of the main characters challenge, and the contrast with the bleak directness of his environment
    • 4/5
      Nominated for the three top Canadian literary prizes, this debut novel is beautifully written. There were passages and descriptions that I had to keep rereading, they just blew me away. I had some problems with the character development (the mother just fades away...), but most of the narrative rang true. The novel left me wanting more...
    • 5/5
      What a journey this book has taken me on!
      Layers of story, layers of emotion, layers of identity.

      I highly recommend Annabel to anyone interested in gender studies, or really to anyone who enjoys deep looks into a unique character.

      I will look for other work by this author.
    • 4/5
      I so wanted to love this book, and I didn't. What a disappointment. But I believe it to be a case of "It's not you, it's me." I just wasn't in the right mood.
    • 4/5
      This review is going to be more of a compare-contrast of [Annabel] and Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, a book I read earlier this year. Both tackle the rather sensitive topic of intersexuality, which has also been called hermaphroditism. The two books couldn't be further apart, IMO, in their delivery of the topic. Eugenides tackles the topic by anchoring it in a sweeping family saga, with a dark humour perspective and a fair bit of detailed scientific facts thrown into the mix. Winter takes a very different approach. She softens the topic, tackling it from a more intimate point of view while bringing in the landscape of a small, hunting and trapping community in Labrador to help convey the sense of isolation Wayne/Annabel experiences as he embarks on a journey of self determination. I want to call the Eugenides and Winter books the epitome of American and Canadian story-telling. Eugenides sweeping immigrant family saga is a testament to what has created America. Winter takes a truly Canadian approach by presenting a more sedate, focused story, making both the intersexuality and the Canadian culture/geography simultaneous focuses of the story. Even the violence that occurs in the story is muted... providing glimpses, but not all the graphic details of the violence. I liked that approach. It provided for a consistent overall feel of the story. Some readers may not agree, but I think the larger theme in Annabel is how Winter displays the slowly developing awareness of Wayne - and the reactions of his family and close friends - as he embarks on this journey of self discovery. This was captured really well. I think it also speaks to why it is wrong for adults, both parents and medical professionals, to make decisions - even when they think they are doing so in the best interests of the child - without fully understanding how their decisions can have an impact on the child as they develop. Overall, a beautifully written story. Some aspects of the story may be a little hard to accept from a realism perspective but for a debut novel, I feel that its strengths outweigh any deficits/deficiencies detected.
    • 4/5
      Annabel by Kathleen Winter is set some time in the 1960's in the rather remote community of Labrador in Canada. Annabel is an intersex person who is first assigned a male gender at birth and this the story of their community, growth and acceptance of themselves.

      What first grabbed me about Annabel so many years ago was the way that Winter writers the Canadian landscape. It's so detailed that it was vivid for me, a person who, at the time, hadn't even been to Canada.

      I love Winter's writing because Labrador actually becomes a character and the way that all of the characters interact with their environment varies. I've read a couple of reviews that say that they didn't like this book because it didn't feel true enough, but I wouldn't agree with that.

      Objective 'Truth' does not equal validity and this book's emotive scenes are so much more important to the story. I would, however, like to point out that this book is written by a woman and thus, the intersex experience can be inauthentic or even romanticised, so I would love to read this book again more critically and see what I think.

      But overall I did really love this book and would recommend it if you wanted to read more Canadian literature and wanted to read something very atmospheric.
    • 2/5

      If you're going to read about a hermaphrodite, I'd recommend Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides over this book.   I don't know if it's just the bleak Newfoundland setting that colored the tone of the book, but this whole story left me depressed and wanting my time back.

      "
    • 4/5
      Wayne was born a hermaphrodite, with both boys' and girls' parts. He and his family live in a small town in Labrador, Canada. The only people who know about Wayne are his parents and a family friend, Thomasina. Wayne's parents choose to raise him as a boy, and he has to take medication. Wayne is an adolescent when he finds out, but can feel the girl inside him, a girl he calls Annabel.I quite liked this. It doesn't move quickly (though it covers a long time period, as Wayne grows up and moves to St. John's, Newfoundland, after high school). I think it's done really well, as Wayne struggles to figure out exactly who he is.
    • 4/5
      What a good story, although quite sad at times. Also educational as I did not know a lot about hermaphrodites. This was my first read by this author, and it is a story that will stay with me for a long time. I truly enjoyed this novel!
    • 4/5
      Powerful, sad, amazing, human - damn fine writing.
    • 5/5
      I almost stopped reading this about three times. It is not an easy read - emotionally, not in terms of complexity. I am so glad I stuck through it. I felt so bad for Wayne right from the beginning, especially when the baby was described as not yet having any reason to mistrust anybody. I just knew that this would change in such a jarring way. I enjoyed reading through the discussion questions after the epilogue. I still can't answer many of the questions and will devote some time now to reading what others thought.

      This is the first Canada Reads 2014 book that I have read (Cockroach is next), but the competition will have to be fierce to have a chance. I hope to have all of the books read by the time the competition starts.
    • 4/5
      Annabel was published by House of Anansi in 2010 and became a national bestseller. The book won the Thomas Head Raddall Award, and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award and the Orange Prize.
    • 4/5
      Exquisite. Ms. Winter's writing is enough to take your breath away. The setting is simply spectacular. The story is deeply complex without being in the least showy. Highly recommended to fans of the very best lyrical fiction has to offer.
    • 3/5
      Not at all what I expected. I did not love it, but it is still a good novel. Almost YA in its writing style, but the content is of course more adult. Interesting writing style -- mostly traditionally structured sentences, which is unusual for books of this caliber, which usually have fragments. The writing does shift as you read, and the sentences become more complex and lengthy. For all its description and fullness, I like that the "disturbing" scene is mostly dialogue and thought, which makes it sufferable. It's Labrador, but not fishing and ports -- hunting and small town, instead. It asks questions about gender and identity, but in a whisper, not a megaphone. It's unusual, and yet it's not. I thought it would be about the mother, but it's about the father. It's about contradictions.
    • 5/5
      What an amazing book! I was struck by the respectful way the characters were drawn so that even when someone made a decision that, from the readers perspective, was clearly not a good one, it remained understandable and right in its own way. So much love...
    • 5/5
      Wow! This is the best book I've read in a while. The characters are deeply drawn, from the quietness and intelligence of Treadway, who is tormented by the knowledge of his child's condition, to Jacinta, dealing with suppressed longing for her former life and a spiraling depression, to Thomasina, the wise and perceptive world traveler, and finally to Wayne, struggling with all sides of his identity. Intertwined with all of them is a deep love. Kathleen Winters' writing is heartbreakingly beautiful, her descriptions so realistic you can almost see, hear, and smell beautiful Labrador.
    • 4/5
      Very sensitive story about a child born to a trapper and school teacher wife in Croydon Harbour, Labrador. The time period is 1968 and the child is raised as a boy. However, he never really fits in and things change dramatically at puberty when a visit to the Goose Bay hospital is required.Some really good characters fill the story including the Treadway and Jacinta Blake, his teacher Thomasina and friend Wally Michelin.Well written with very believable characters.
    • 4/5
      When a baby is born, the first question anyone asks is “Boy or girl?” It is accepted that gender is the most important thing about the child, before questions like “Healthy?””All limbs and digits present?” or “Brain inside skull properly?” No, the shape of the genitals is the most important thing to society.In 1968, in a barely populated area of Labrador, a baby is born to Jacinta and Treadway Blake. Born in the bathtub with three neighbor women in attendance, only one person, Thomasina, notices that the child is not quite the same as most babies. This child has both penis and vagina. With the exception of the parents and Thomasina, no one in the area knows the child’s secret. Treadway names the baby Wayne, declares it will be raised as a boy, and not long after, the vagina is sewn shut. Treadway, a man who spends the better part of the year running trap lines in the wild forests of Labrador and lives a basic, homesteading life, goes out of his way to teach Wayne to be a man of the same sort: tying knots, trapping, reading sign, skinning and preserving pelts, snowmobiling. He fears any sign of femininity in Wayne; the facts that the child’s best- only- same age friend is a girl and that s/he prefers reading and drawing to rebuilding engines provokes Treadway to doing something that severs the friendship between Wayne and the friend. What Treadway doesn’t know is that for several years, Thomasina, as Wayne’s school teacher, nurtured the interests that weren’t “male” and provided a safe person for Wayne to talk to- and at one point, saves Wayne’s life. Treadway is a decent man. He is not mean or nasty or even a misogynist. He simply knows that life will be easier for Wayne if there is no question as to gender. And life is easier for men than for women. Still, I had a very hard time empathizing with Treadway. Despite his love for Wayne, he cannot see gender as anything other than a strict binary. Jacinta is a dim character, not fully realized. Thomasina is the liveliest of the adults. Almost too good to be true, she is open to most everything in a way that the other residents aren’t. The location itself is a character; it is brought up frequently and shapes the people and their lives. It’s almost like another book is inserted into Annabel’s tale; there is the story of Wayne/Annabel, and there is the story of the land, and, to a degree, Treadway’s relationship with it. Sometimes the stories intersect; most often they do not. The story of the land is achingly beautiful, but I found myself wondering at times why it was in that book. This is Wayne/Annabel’s coming of age story, but it’s also a late coming of age for Treadwell, Jacinta, and Thomasina. Wayne/Annabel is not a girl in a boy’s body, as some seem to think, but both male/female in both body and soul, and this is still a hard situation to live in today; think how hard it would have been in the 1970s, especially in a rural area. The writing itself is beautiful, especially in the descriptive passages. But the characters could have used more work, and the book could have lost some of its size and gained focus. When considered as a first novel, though,, it’s a stupendous achievement, and I can’t wait to see what Winter does next.
    • 4/5
      Actual Rating: 4.5Wow. Simply wow.I have no words to describe how much I adored Annabel. Honestly, I don't even consider myself worthy of reviewing such a masterpiece, but I feel that I should share the beauty of this novel with other readers, which is why I will try my best to do justice to this glorious piece of literature.I was actually searching the dictionary for words that I could use to describe Annabel when I came across the word "dainty", which means 'delicately beautiful' and that is precisely what Annabelis.In 1968, in Croydon Harbour, Labrador, Canada, Jacinta Blake gives birth to an unusual child who is neither male nor female but both in one body. The child is born with the reproductive organs of both males and females. Doctors come to the conclusion that the baby can be raised as a boy and the truth remains concealed with the boy's parents, Jacinta and Treadway Blake and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina Montague.Annabel is the story of Wayne's journey from the time of his birth to his infancy, adolescence and youth. But above all that, Annabel is about seeing and appreciating beauty in all the various forms that it presents itself in. It is about how society perceives anything and everything that is strange and unusual.Jacinta and Treadway were cherubic. I loved reading about the progress and ups and downs of their marriage. As parents, both of them want the best for their child and as humans, they want others to accept their child for who he is even though their discomfort and confusion about him is evident in the early phase of Wayne's life. Treadway tries to mould Wayne into a young man whom he can be proud of, at the same, Jacinta has this deep urge of guarding the part of Wayne that screams to be a girl. Jacinta and Treadway share a wonderful relationship with each other and with their child. When author Kathleen Winter describes Jacinta and Treadway, she doesn't just elaborate the two of them, but you get a glimpse into the live of any inhabitant of Labrador, a glimpse into society in general.I absolutely admire Jacinta and Treadway Blake's neighbour and the woman who first realised the strange notion that came with Wayne's birth, Thomasina Montague. I am in complete awe of Thomasina. She was a caretaker, mentor, teacher and in a very uncharacteristic manner, mother to Wayne. After losing her own husband and daughter, Graham Montague and Annabel Montague, she is inclined to selflessly devote herself to Wayne. She decides to secretly reincarnate a part of her lost daughter in Wayne by naming him Annabel. They (Thomasina and Wayne) shared an enchanting relationship. Thomasina was brave and resolute. She was everything you wish every individual on this planet could be or could strive to be.Another character that I really admire is Wally Michelin, Wayne's childhood best friend who, in a secret and sublet way, makes Wayne reach out to parts of himself he didn't even know existed. She was everything Wayne wished he could be. They shared a lovely relationship and I loved how their story ended.I have read in many reviews that the reader wants to hug the character they read about. I always found it rather funny. Until I read about Wayne. I now know exactly what someone means when they say that they want to hug a book character. Reading about Wayne and getting to know him made me want to pull him close and hug him tightly. I loved Wayne. As a child, he seemed so mature for his age and curious too. I loved his curiosity. I felt for him. At times, I was silently weeping for Wayne. From his obsession with a Russian swimmer's suit to his discovery of make-up products, Wayne comes a long, long way and as a reader, I found myself accompanying him on his journey. As he grows up, he becomes his own individual and it was absolutely enthralling to read about him stepping into the world, trying to figure things out, meeting new people, seeing how people react to him. Wow. I cannot even put into words how much I loved Wayne and how much I cared about him throughout the book.Annabel is all about growing up, learning, seeing, observing, contemplating, becoming and above anything else, loving...Annabel is an exquisitely crafted novel. It has so much to tell the reader. I found myself contemplating over how we see the world with such a narrow mind and there really is so much out there. Whether man or woman or both at once, we are all beautiful in our own way and the least and best that we can do for someone is accept them for who and what they are and let them be. I had never thought I'd love Annabel so much. Author Kathleen Winter has written an exceptional and remarkable novel that has made me open my eyes and heart to all the hermaphrodites out there who, in the end of the day, are just like you and me- human beings.I am in complete awe of Annabel and I am so elated that I read it. An unforgettable book, Annabel will always remain very close to my heart.
    • 2/5
      Knowing the subject matter, I came into this book thinking I would really like it, but it was just so... boring. How a book about a hermaphrodite's journey of self-discovery can be boring, I just don't know. The problem for me was that the writing was so distant from the characters: only Thomasina had any real depth or engagement with the reader. Every other character, including Wayne, was just bland and distant and never intrigued me. I was highly disappointed.
    • 4/5
      The book was beautifully written but something about it left me cold. I just couldn't enjoy it very much at all.
    • 5/5
      From the inside front cover:In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret--the baby's paretns, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. together the adults make a difficult decision: to raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows to adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self--a girl he thinks of as "Annabel"--is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life.***SPOILERS FOLLOW***That pretty much sums up the story but, of course, there is so much more. There is Wayne/Annabel's best friend growing up, Wallis Michelin, who dreams of becoming an opera singer. There is the original Annabel, daughter of Thomasina, who was drowned just around the time Wayne/Annabel was born while out canoeing with her blind father who also drowned. There is the fact that Wayne thought for years that Thomasina was calling him "Amble" when in fact she was saying her daughter's name.Thomasina was a wonderful character. Although she was devastated by her daughter's and husband's deaths she took steps to get beyond that. She decided to sell the house and study to be a teacher. She also travelled far beyond Labrador, sending postcards back to Wayne/Annabel of bridges she encountered because s/he was fascinated by them. Thomasina was like Wayne/Annabel's fairy godmother, turning up when s/he most needed her.Where I felt the book lacked something was in the exploration of Wayne/Annabel's parents. I never really understood why they remained married since Treadway spent most of his time in the bush. I also was left unsatisfied about Jacinta's artistry, which seemed to be introduced and then just ignored, and her depression, which seemed very serious but was never treated.Another area that I didn't think was given as much attention as it should have was the rape/assault against Wayne/Annabel. It surely must have been a traumatizing event and yet Winter doesn't tell us how s/he really felt about it.I would recommend this book to other readers, especially people who enjoy Canadian literature. I've been told that Middlesex, another book about a hermaphrodite is very good, so I'm going to try to read that soon in order to compare.
    • 5/5
      Simply an amazing piece of work. It is hard to imagine that this could be a first novel, but it is. Ms. Winter has an amazing gift for language and incredible insights into the human condition. Each character from the crusty Treadway to the kind softhearted Wayne was shown in multiple dimensions that denied the reader the chance to accept stereotypes or to make lasting judgments on anyone in the story.