Day 22 of
my Book Advent Calendar means an author beginning with “W”. I’ve chosen another Canadian writer.
Day 22: Annabel by Kathleen Winter
4
Stars
This book
was a nominee for the 2010 Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction
Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Baileys Women’s Prize
for Fiction.
The setting
is 1960s Labrador. The main character is
a hermaphrodite. In deference to the
more obvious of the child’s sex organs, Treadway, the father, decides his child
will be named Wayne and raised as a boy.
Jacinta, the mother, had been tempted to do nothing but accedes to her
husband’s wishes; nonetheless, Jacinta nurtures Wayne’s female side in her own
secretive way as does Thomasina, a family friend who is the only other person
to know about the child’s ambiguous gender.
As the
child grows, the parents are divided:
Jacinta mourns the daughter who might have been and Treadway pushes the
child to become more masculine. Puberty
brings all conflict to the surface and Wayne learns the truth about himself,
although his other self had been manifesting itself earlier.
This is a
novel about secrets and silences. Almost
everyone around Wayne backs away from difficult truths as he continues to
puzzle through the contradictions of his existence. Wayne’s interest in bridges serves as an
analogue for the possibilities inherent in his existence.
The novel
is less about chromosomal anomaly than it is about human potential for cruelty
and neglect and ignorance as much as for tolerance and generosity and
strength. We are shown the human traits
that override gender.
Setting
plays a big role in how characters are shaped or misshapen, isolated or
liberated, together or alone.
The novel
challenges ideas of what is normal; it encourages us to accept what is
underlining the pain and shame we create when we try to make people fit into
stiff categories when they simply can’t.
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