A complex transgender love story that mixes selfishness and compassion.
A woman grapples with a new reality after her husband comes out as a transwoman in this detailed debut memoir of marriage and transformation.
Collier was a happily wed mother leading a normal life with two children and a loving husband named Fred. When a fire ruined their home, Collier and her family were safe, but the tragedy seemed to mark an ominous beginning to an even bigger change: Fred confessed that he wanted to live life as a woman. Thrown into a spiral of doubt and fear, the couple struggled to find the tools they needed to survive. When one therapist believed Fred’s aspiration was merely an episode of past trauma that needed to be worked out, Collier was relieved, but it turned out not to be the case. Finally they discovered true help, and Collier’s spouse found her new name, Seda, and herself. But the author was distracted by the larger questions that such a transition imposed upon the couple: would they have sex? Was Collier now a lesbian? What had become of the husband she loved so dearly? As Seda evolved, Collier had to define her family anew, co-parenting and coming out as the wife of a transwoman. Eventually, the couple decided to physically separate, with Collier falling in love again. Despite these adventures, the author returned home to Seda, where they created a new definition of family upon the foundation of the love that they started with. Collier, a natural storyteller, delivers detailed dialogue and engrossing scenes, including “snapshots” of her memories over the years. While she explicitly wants to write a book for the partners of transwomen, the memoir threatens to capsize under its own self-centeredness in the face of Seda’s transition, which can be painful to read. There are moments of grace when Collier finds empathy (“Who was I to tell him how to live?” she wonders), but it takes several chapters for the author to embark on her own journey, which gives Seda enough space for hers. The chaos of watching these characters form a family again is all the more tender when others, such as Collier’s mother, express love for Seda. A glossary of terms and an offering of resources attempt to ground this memoir in service rather than exploration.
A complex transgender love story that mixes selfishness and compassion.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Abbondanza Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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