Annabel

September 20, 2010
Isolated as Croyden Harbour may be from the social upheaval of 1968, the tiny village on the southeast Labrador coast plays host to its own revolution in Winter's sincere, self-serious debut. Jacinta and Treadway Blake are like any other couple in town—he's away on the trapline all winter, she's confined to domestic life. But the clarity of traditional gender roles begins to unravel when Jacinta gives birth to a hermaphrodite. Both Treadway and the local doctor decide the baby will be brought up as a boy—he's named Wayne, and his female genitalia are sewn shut. Meanwhile, Jacinta's friend Thomasina, quietly tends to the spiritual development of the child's female identity. Kept in the dark about his condition for most of his childhood, Wayne struggles to live up to the manly standards imposed by his well-meaning if curmudgeonly father, but when adolescence rolls around, Wayne's body reveals a number of surprises and becomes a battleground of physiology, identity, and sexual discovery. Though delivered at times with a heavy hand, the novel's moral of acceptance and understanding is sure to win Winter many fans.

Starred review from November 1, 2010

In a remote coastal town in Newfoundland in the 1970s, a young person of mixed gender struggles for identity, acceptance and understanding

Joining a select group of novels including Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (2002) and Alan Friedman's Hermaphrodeity (1972), Winter's affecting first novel is the story of Wayne Blake, who is subjected to special corrective surgery as a newborn, raised as a boy and given injections and hormone pills to maintain his masculine traits. His mother, Jacinta, a cosmopolitan-minded outsider from the city of St. John's, is torn over quashing his female qualities and interests but wants even less to go against the wishes of his closed-off father, Treadway, a trapper away for months at a time. Only Thomasina, a worldly, free-spirited midwife who privately calls the child Annabel—after the daughter she lost in a freak boating accident that also claimed her husband—asserts that nature should be allowed to take its course: "That baby is all right the way it is. There's enough room in this world." Even as Wayne unhappily goes along with the program, his body asserts its true self, most shockingly when doctors operating on him to release trapped menstrual blood discover a fetus. As Wayne comes of age, he must endure losing his closest friend Wally (a girl), being viciously attacked by bullies after he moves away to attend college and strange looks when he quits the drugs and assumes his natural self. The Montreal-based Winter, a native of Newfoundland, possesses a rare blend of lyrical brilliance, descriptive power and psychological and philosophical insight. Her way with fate and sadness recalls The World According to Garp, without the cute irony.

A compelling, gracefully written novel about mixed gender that sheds insight as surely as it rejects sensationalism. This book announces the arrival of a major writer.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2010

Winter's first novel tells the story of an intersex child born in the late 1960s in a small, rural town in Canada and raised as a boy. His parents try to protect Wayne from harm, each in his or her own way; his father tries to interest him in the wilderness skills that men in their community use to make a living, but his mother refuses to discourage his interest in more feminine pursuits. Wayne doesn't learn of his intersexuality until a medical emergency reveals his condition to him. Though he tries to be a boy to fit in, he is preoccupied by the girl that he knows lives within him; he has to leave home and quit his hormone therapy to allow his body to be as ambiguous as he feels inside. Winter's lyrical language contrasts with the characters' discomfort about Wayne's secret. VERDICT Readers interested in literary explorations of gender, such as Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, will appreciate this novel as well. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/10.]--Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Lib., Lexington Park, MD

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2010
Wayne, born into the harsh, rural landscape of Labrador, Canada, in 1968, is a hermaphrodite. It is his father who ultimately decides to raise him as a male and names him. Only Waynes parents and their friend Thomasina Baikie, also present at his birth, are aware of his gender duality. The two women silently battle against Waynes fathers gender assignment, and as Wayne grows older, he must contend with the two genders struggling for dominance within him. His father, Treadway, a trapper who spends most of his time outdoors, works hard to steer Wayne away from his feminine side. His mother, Jacinta, becomes increasingly estranged from her husband as she mourns the loss of her female child. Following the tragic death of her husband and daughter, Thomasina travels the world and sends enticing postcards to Wayne of the world beyond his own. A simple yet eloquent coming-of-age tale, this debut novel quietly questions our assumptions about gender by presenting us with a host of complex, evocative characters. A fantastic read that will appeal to fans of Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex (2002).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)