Book Review: Detransition, Baby

23/06/2022

Book Review | Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters

I remember hearing about this novel right after just reading an article on detransitioning in a national newspaper. I’ve long been interested in the transgender experience and particularly in how the conversation has changed -often for the worst- as its become more mainstream. I previously had had the pleasure of collaborating with a close friend to write a play based on her life experiences as a transwoman living on the Bible Belt, during the process of which we spoke to many other trans individuals and activists. It opened up a world to me, one of confusion and complications yes, but also of empathy and love. I saw how much people had to sacrifice to live their authentic lives and, though I didn’t envy the position this so often put them in, I absolutely did envy the fact that some people just understood who they were so completely. What an incredible thing.

I mention all this because the launch of the novel in the UK was met with the sort of aggression and push back that’s become synonymous with living as a trans person nowadays. Last year Detransition, Baby was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The longlisting was responded to angrily online, including an open letter from The Wild Woman Writing Club arguing that including Torrey Peters in the prize was akin to pushing women back to a state of marginalisation that had been the impetus for having a single-sex prize in the first place. While this is a conversation that I think is worth having, as there’s nothing wrong with hashing out the best way forward when our society is adapting to change and ensuring everyone is heard and protected, the truth is that so quickly it becomes clear that this is not the aim here. The aim is to degrade and reject trans people. Within a paragraph the open letter moves from apparent concern about the future of a writing competition for cis women to outright transphobia, referring to Peters as a ‘male author' and trans women as ‘fantasising about occupying our bodies’. In protest a lot of people ran out and bought a copy of Detransition, Baby. On one hand obviously this is great, particularly for Peters, but it’s also another example of conflict rather than conversation.

The truth is - and yes I’m finally going to talk about the content of the book itself - if one was generally interested in finding a common understanding rather than fighting, then Detransition, Baby is an incredible place to start. Though I’ve read plenty of plays, memoirs and novels about the trans experience, I’ve absolutely never read anything as raw, honest and intelligent as this. I think that it’s a highly important piece of literature for our time because it does what a great book should do - allow you to experience the world from an entirely different perspective. The story centres around three individuals, a cis woman (Katrina), a trans woman (Reese), and a detransitioned trans woman (Amy/Ames). It explores in minute detail what being a woman means to each of these people - whether that’s to do with how it intersects with race, financial independence, clothes, sex, control or being a mother. There are so many nuances that are glossed over when being trans is distilled down to ‘fantasising about occupying our bodies’ or exhaustively discussing bathroom and changing room rules, and Peters made me think about them all. As a cis woman, there are elements of womanhood that I take for granted and I felt moved by how important they were to Reese.

Regardless, it’s easy to see why some might find the novel so triggering. Before I’d read it, and was perusing small extracts that were being bandied about on twitter to belittle the Women’s Prize decision, I was taken aback by some of Reese’s early sex scenes. With fantasies on full display and discussion about the high trans suicide rate it explores a grittier, less wholesome world. Reese is lost at the start of the novel, still mourning the end of an important relationship with Amy/Ames and engaging in mercenary sex with married men. Though it’s absolutely not my place to feel this way, I feared that it might be too challenging and risque a piece of literature to be representative of the trans experience in a positive way. Once I read the whole book though my perception totally changed. These cherry picked scenes are a small but important part of the novel, and it was totally right that Peters didn’t sanitise the situations that Reese found herself in. They were another opportunity for full disclosure. There’s a moment that I’d particularly disliked - Reese’s male lover is HIV-positive and she compares the frisson of danger during sex as her version of a cis woman potentially getting pregnant. At the time I thought that was pretty tasteless. Then COVID struck and suddenly social media was full of people flashing up their lateral flow tests alongside jokes about being positive that hinted at pregnancy. It reminded me how humour adapts to your situation and to consider that before judging someone else for being crass or otherwise not to your taste.

The heart of the novel is motherhood. Reese has long dreamed of becoming a mother, an option not naturally available to her. When Amy/Ames’ new girlfriend Katrina gets pregnant, the three begin discussing the creation of a relationship that would allow all three of them to mother the baby. It’s a story about love and longing, a conversation about what the future might look like for families. I found it fascinating, touching, exhausting and complicated. Peters has written characters with such rich insular lives - especially Reese - that the reader experiences a no holds barred opportunity to understand everything about what makes that person tick. In a world where we’re desperate to pin each other down and avoid complication it feels entirely necessary.

So yes, I loved Detransition, Baby. I didn’t find it an easy read by any means - it’s challenging both in terms of ideas and prose. Both the friends I was reading alongside dropped out midway through. Peters writes beautifully but with a lot of detail and somewhat flowery language. It’s lovely to read but sometimes distracts from the novel’s forward momentum. I’ve focused heavily in this review about it being a trans novel and in many case that’s true, even the jacket blurb calls it ‘a uniquely trans take on love, motherhood and those exes you just can’t quit’. Still though there’s a lot of universality to it. Peters herself has dedicated the book ‘To divorced cis women, who, like me, had to face starting their life over without either reinvesting in the illusions from the past, or growing bitter about the future’. Another example not to close ourselves off from each other.

Thanks to Kate Leaver for an incredible gift of Detransition, Baby and our local bookshop Queen’s Park Books.

Buy your own copy right here at my affiliate link on bookshop.org