Detransition, Baby
Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021 and Top Ten The Times Bestseller
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3.9 • 20 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 100 BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
Shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics' Circle John Leonard Prize for best first book
As heard on BBC Radio 4's Front Row
'A voraciously knowing, compulsively readable novel' Chris Kraus
'Tremendously funny and sexy as hell' Juliet Jacques
'I loved this very smart book from start to finish, with its beautifully drawn, complicated, and winning characters.' Madeleine Miller
Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina's pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family - and raise the baby together?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Peters's sharp comedy (after Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones) charts the shifting dynamics of gender, relationships, and family as played out in three characters' exploration of trans femininity. Reese, a trans woman from the Midwest now living in New York City, is in the throes of an affair with a kinky, dominant, and married man. Ames, Reese's ex who has detransitioned since their breakup three years earlier, is now with his boss, a divorced cis woman named Katrina. When Katrina gets pregnant, Ames must reckon with his gender once again. Katrina intends to get an abortion if Ames leaves her, and he comes up with a solution so crazy it just might work. He cannot be a father, but he can be a parent ("He knew, however, that Katrina didn't have the queer background to allow for that distinction"), and Reese, more than anything, wants to be a mother; desperate, Ames asks Reese if she will be a co-mother; he also confesses to Katrina that he once lived as a woman. As Reese, Katrina, and Ames reckon with the possibility and difficulties of forming a family, their quick wit gets them through heavy scenes (Reese on Katrina's "AIDS panic": "How retro"). Peters conceives of a world so lovable and complex, it's hard to let go.
