Ashe

No one does it like Sarah Waters. She's so good at pulling you into the world of her characters and toying with your emotions. Following Nancy as she leaves normalcy behind and is thrust between the worlds of London's subcultures is such a roller coaster. This book had all the twists and sapphic eroticism you could ask for, and underpinning it all is a relatable journey of self discovery.

This book is a brutally violent, grotesque, and shocking horror novel that brilliantly literalizes the discourse around trans rights. The polite violence of the real world is replaced by graphic, visceral action that forces you to confront what it feels like to be demonized and targeted by a small group of hateful bigots while “allies” watch on and let it happen.

I think too many people dismiss this as a book written for shock value. Yes it wants to shock you, but none of the violence, rape, gore, or sex is without purpose. It wants you to feel uncomfortable. It wants you to confront real, human bodies. It wants you to feel outraged, resentful, scared, bitter, jealous, angry, sad, hopeful—all the emotions that make up so much of the trans experience living in a world that tolerates us, but rarely defends us.

Like any good story, the literal events of the plot are just a vector for those feelings, and as over the top as those events can be, Gretchen's engaging prose and fully-realized characters keep you grounded in the human experience throughout, and all the confusing, ugly, and beautiful baggage that comes with it.

All that said, it is a shocking, violent horror story. As effectively I think it uses that format to convey the struggles of the trans experience, if that's not your genre then this book probably isn't for you.


As an aside to those who think this book hates women: I think it's pretty obvious that it doesn't. There are several cis women among the protagonists, and while it has plenty of criticism to go around, the only people the book clearly hates are the TERFs. If those are the only characters who count as real women to you, and you find yourself offended on behalf of the fascist order executing people in the street maybe you need to have a sit down and think about that.