I remember first reading about this during my MA degree and found it incredibly difficult to comprehend. This is what doctors STILL use today to determine whether an intersex child is a ‘boy’ or a ‘girl’, and then they assign physical sex characteristics and thus a gender with which to raise the child. As the birth was happening and the descriptions of the baby occurred, I wondered if she would mention the phalometer. What I found most striking about the book was that Winter did her research on individuals born intersex/hermaphroditic. It goes back to the first quote in the additional quotes below, but Treadway’s quiet acceptance of a decision just makes you think there has to be hope out there for all sorts of charged social issues. I also felt that Treadway’s acceptance of Wayne/Annabel at the end of the novel and the actions he contemplates are indescribably awe inspiring.
Although he probably had fewer than 15 pages dialogue (I feel like that’s a lot even), his impact was exponentially greater, especially with the ending.
The strong silence and inflexibility of Treadway and the open swaths and tall rich forests of Canada were synonymous. There was something about Treaday and his animal ability that not only portrayed his character, but also my idea of what Canada is like. What I found most beautiful from the novel, aside from Annabel’s story, was Treadway’s character and the way Winter wrote it. And any of the other countless people who lived in Croydon Harbor and are survivors. And it doesn’t just have to do with Wayne/Annabel, but with Thomasina, Wally, Jacinta, and Treadway. This is definitely one of the themes of the book, along with acceptance and surviving and any other number of things. “Sometimes you had to be who you were and endure what happened to you, and to you alone, before you could understand the first thing about it.” (67) Not that you would want to, because the book is fairly deceptively complicated, but if you had to sum it up in one line it would be the following: As I haven’t read any of the award winners for which this book was nominated, I can’t say my theory holds that the nominees are generally better than the winners, but that’s still my gut response. Not only is it well written, but it is well researched and really makes you think without making you struggle to do so. This is definitely one of the top three most beautiful books I have read this year.
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