Detransition, Baby
A Novel
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4.3 • 27 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The lives of three women—transgender and cisgender—collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires in “one of the most celebrated novels of the year” (Time)
“Reading this novel is like holding a live wire in your hand.”—Vulture
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by more than twenty publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Time, Vogue, Esquire, Vulture, and Autostraddle
PEN/Hemingway Award Winner • Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Gotham Book Prize • Longlisted for The Women’s Prize • Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club Pick • New York Times Editors’ Choice
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Torrey Peters’ heartfelt novel is filled with courageous conversations that highlight the different experiences of womanhood and the complexities of balancing self-discovery with a desire to belong. When Ames hears the news that Katrina—a recently divorced cis woman and his boss and lover—is pregnant, he must face the fact that he’s never told her he detransitioned to live as a man. In his desire to be a parent but not a father, he thinks of his ex, Reese, their past together as two trans women in love, and how she had always wanted to be a mom. In a leap of faith, Ames asks them if they’d want to build a family together. If you think this is complicated, the plot of Detransition, Baby only thickens from here—and we loved every minute of it. Through compassionate and confident writing, Peters reminds us of the loving work it takes to create trust and intimacy between people. This smart and snappy novel kept us on our toes from the moment we began, and we’re itching to read what Peters writes next.
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.
Customer Reviews
powerful
i don’t know what to say. it’s been years since a book captivated me like this one has.
it was a great read, and a really hard read, too.