Author: Ami Polonsky
Publisher: Disney
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!
This is a novel which I decided would be fun to blog along with Bumbling Into Body hair by Everett Maroon. The two stories, one fiction (this one) and one factual, are like bookends to the entire spectrum of gender identity, which is a lot more complex than most people realize. Gender isn't black & white. It's not a binary thing, despite popular misconception. It's a sliding scale and there's no guarantee at conception where any of us will end up along it. Gender isn't a congenital disease, and to pretend that there's something bad, or abnormal, or immoral about people who end up outside the two most common ranges and behave as nature intended them to, is simply wrong, and that's all there is to it.
Bumbling Into Body Hair is a true story about a man who was born in a woman's body and underwent a painful, amusing, rewarding, and educational transition to 'normalize' himself. The fictional work reviewed here alongside this today is the opposite of this in many ways: it's about a young boy who identifies more as a female than ever he does as a male. I invite you to read both my reviews, which are tied together in some ways, but still very different, even though I rated both books worthy reading.
There's no sex in this novel which is a good thing, because it's not about sex, it's about gender identification - a different thing altogether. That's why I employ the term 'genderism' instead of the more common 'sexism'. It's not about sex. This novel is beautifully titled and just as beautifully written. It's really good, and I recommend it. That doesn't mean I didn't have an issue or two (I always do!).
Grayson is twelve, and has a secret life fantasizing about being dressed as a girl. He's so secretive that he even disguises his doodles (of princesses) as geometric shapes to avoid anyone learning of his predilection. One of my initial issues with this was that the novel never gets down to the nitty-gritty of exactly what is going on with Grayson. Grayson evidently isn't gay, but is he simply (simply, hah!) a transvestite, or is he truly a female in a male body? The two are not the same, but it didn't take me long (yah, I maybe slow, but I get there in the end!) to realize that this doesn't matter, because it's not about what he/she is, it's about his/her freedom to be whatever it is that he/she is, and the obstacles which society places squarely in the way of people who honestly try to inhabit themselves.
One reviewer pointed out that the author does nothing to answer this question or to help Grayson's case with her choice of personal pronouns, consistently employing the masculine form to refer to Grayson (from which I take my cue for this review), and the ending to the novel doesn't reveal anything either. In the final analysis (which I just did, with a report in triplicate, with lots of graphs and diagrams and complicated sums on my desk!) and in the end, that's just fine. I have to say I did wonder, at one point, if the author was going to bring-up Grayson's hidden history and reveal that he is intersexed and had a gender forced upon him by some mindless meddling medico, but this wasn't how it played out - at least not unless Polonsky has a sequel in mind which might be more forthcoming!
The isolation of Grayson is so great that he has no friends, not even amongst his siblings, which technically aren't his siblings since he's living with his aunt and uncle (his mom and dad died in a accident when he was four). He does end-up falling into a friendship with Amelia, a new girl in school, who is slightly overweight, and who ends up hanging out with Grayson almost by default. The two start to have fun and go on shopping trips together to the thrift store to buy clothes, but the one time Grayson bravely tries on a skirt, he's seen by Amelia, and that pretty much kills off their friendship. But that's not even the biggest event in his life so far.
Much more momentous is the staging of a play about Persephone, and Grayson reads for the female lead. The play's director, Mr Finnegan (about whom there are rumors), and who is universally known as Finn amongst teachers and students alike, allows this. Grayson so inhabits the role during his trial read that he's given the part. None of the other actors have any issues with this (apart from one temporary resentment) thereby showing what consummate professionals they are. I was thrilled by this aspect of the story, but of course, choices have consequences, and they come thick and fast now.
The real issue I had with the story is about this play. Grayson is thrilled to have the part, and has to suffer the slings and arrows attendant with it, including brutal bullying, but he never wavers because his eye is on the prize of being able to dress as a woman in public. The bulk of the novel is taken up with his anticipation of, and participation in, rehearsals. It fills so much of his life - and the story - that I was really let-down when none of the actual performance was included. Instead, all we got was what quite literally looked like the author's sketchy notes for the writing - a list without any elaboration, no talking, no lines read, no action, no reaction. The performance of the play was essentially skipped in its entirety. This play was so important to Grayson that I felt robbed of it, and cheated out of it.
In many regards, this story is a dedicated replica of the movie Shakespeare in Love which was brilliant. That, of course, featured rather the reverse of this: a woman posing as a boy - and a straight woman at that, and it included a tragic love story which would have been out of place here, but the point is that it all came together on the night, during the play, and it was truly magical. I was hoping for the same thing here, and I never got it. The play's the thing, but that doesn't mean I like to be played - or played with.
However, I'm willing to forgive that, and rate this highly because in all other respects it did exactly what it needed to do. It's an important story and well told, and I recommend it.
