Welcome to Dorley Hall

I enjoyed this book very much and read through it in like 4 days. Which for me is very quick, especially for this many pages. I was apprehensive about the premise of the story, I feel it could have gone in a very bad direction and the topic is very delicate if some incorrectly. But it was done in a great way. 

Greaves does something I love which is, that she talks about heavy topics and very clearly unethical and morally grey things but doesn't make that the focus. We are not supposed to think something of it. The book doesn't push you into thinking this is horrible and great, it doesn't scream at you to look at society as something that many literary books do that I hate. It just lets you enjoy the story with these characters. It goes deep into this world but doesn't encroach on the real world. It doesn't puncture the story and sully it with pressing questions about how this should change your perceptions and shit like that. 

I noticed halfway through the book that these chapters are posted online and thus written a chapter at a time. It made me read the book in a different way. It felt very slow and didn't really have the arch or structure I would expect from a standalone or even a book in a series. But now that I know that it is just a much bigger story cut into pieces it makes more sense. Although I could argue this novel should have ended a chapter earlier for it to be more cenmented as a book 1, with a nicer ending line and closure I don't mind it as much as I would have had I not known the origins of the story in that way. 

I'm going to try and keep this review contained to just the first book, but so much of what I love about Dorley as a series is paid off later on in the series, so forgive me if I can't control myself. Welcome to Dorley Hall is one of the most compelling books I've ever read, and is absolutely worth your consideration.

The force fem nature of this premise is by far its' most provocative, so let's start there. I don't think that morality discourse is the most productive this early into the narrative; there's so much context about Dorley's methods and history revealed later in the series that informs my thoughts on the matter, but I also don't think that the question of whether or not Dorley Hall is morally good directly informs the quality of the book. If anything, the complexity of the question only speaks to its' qualities. If the premise doesn't make you too uncomfortable, feel free to skip ahead a little bit.

However, it is an aspect of the story that many people, particularly non transfems, struggle with overcoming. So, as a trans woman, here's some things to consider: transition isn't just something you are, it's also something you do. Dorley's women are materially trans, they've taken the steps to transition both physically and socially. And while they may not have taken those steps on their own, Dorley's program is designed to select those who are most likely to benefit from a material transition. Gendering is an inherently violent and traumatic process, one done to each and every one of us from birth. Dorley's mechanisms are designed to inflict that trauma in reverse, to provide its' patients with a healthier framework to interact with the world.

You can argue about the nuances of these mechanisms, but I find it extremely reductive to treat Dorley Hall's morality as a black and white issue. You can be uncomfortable with a premise while still engaging with it; the fact that Dorley's forced feminization is so provocative is part of what makes the series so compelling.

In the same way that I find much of Dorley's morality discourse to be reductive, I find framings of the series as some kind of “enlightened forcefem” to be unhelpful. It is undeniable that Dorley is written with clear mastery of forcefem as a genre; Alyson explores tropes and archetypes with a level of depth and nuance rarely seen, and the series' popularity has ensured that it will remain both monumental and influential for forcefem and broader tg/tf narratives for a long time. But I also feel that this framing, that Dorley somehow “redeems” a genre of transmisogynistic smut, is incomplete. What Dorley does with the genre is incredible, yes, but its' built on a foundation of other stories, each of which has something to offer.

Dorley has one of the best ensemble casts I've ever seen. While much of this comes later in the series, as Welcome to Dorley Hall focuses primarily on the viewpoints of Stef and Christine, the foundation for that growth is established here. Alyson depicts the internal struggles of transfemininity absolutely incredibly, while simultaneously managing to cover such a broad spectrum of the trans experience.

Stef's internal struggles reminded me of many of my own very early in transition. Overcoming the seemingly impossible mental barrier of admitting your transness. Struggling to accept a new identity because you still “feel” like your old gender, before hormones have had time to do their thing. She's got so, so much to work through, and works as a fantastic challenge to Dorley's methods.

Christine is the other focus of book one, and for the sake of brevity I won't go into full detail about how much I love her. Long story short: I've never felt so damn seen by a fictional character before. Her struggles with being seen as a woman publicly, with overcoming her anxieties and insecurities in order to learn the tools of femininity that she yearns for, mirrored so many of my own struggles so perfectly. Her arc was the motivating push I needed to push beyond the stagnation I'd been feeling in my own transition, and I cannot praise it enough.

Every single side character has this level of depth throughout the series. While Dorley's deconstruction of forced feminization is both provocative and compelling, I personally believe its greatest strength lies in its depiction of transness. This is something the series goes in much greater depth on as it continues, expanding to the viewpoints of a much larger cast, but those characters are all established here, and even without their internal monologues, their internality remains extremely apparant.

Alyson's writing is absolutely captivating. The story is paced incredibly well, allowing its' heavier moments to land without ever letting things get too dark. And more than anything, I can't understate just how funny it is. The premise is big and weighty, yes, but there are so many jokes that absolutely land here. The gallows humor on display here does an excellent job keeping things fun without ever fully distracting from the facts of the scenario. I could not put this book down on first read, and that's a fact that's remained true on rereads.

The Sisters of Dorley is one of the most compelling pieces of fiction I've ever read. And so much of that ground work is laid here in Welcome to Dorley Hall. I cannot understate just how impressive it is for a serialized work to feel so carefully planned and considered. Every single aspect of Dorley's world and characters feels perfectly crafted to spark interesting discussions about the nature of gender and the trans experience. If the premise makes you uncomfortable, that's fine! Don't let that discomfort rob you of an incredible read.

I have a few quibbles with this book, mostly on the subject of pacing and focus, but I'm not going to factor that into my ultimate score or feelings on the book. This was originally published on the AO3 and other serial fiction sites, and while it isn't fanfiction, it does share structural similarities with that type of work. I haven't read fanfiction regularly for over eight years; me whining about its structure would be like saying a soap opera is kind of long.

More to the point: This novel is for, by, and about trans women. I am not a trans woman, so when I went in reading this I tried very hard to keep my goal in mind while reading it. I read this because I want to better understand the art trans women enjoy, and in that sense, this book really succeeded. I think it's a lovely, fun story that plays with dark themes without getting too dark. (I know for my own self, I really prefer bleak dark fiction, so I wasn't totally caught up in the emotion of the story, but as I said before, I'm not the intended audience for this book. If I am not entirely on board with it, that's not the book's fault.)

This book really is a celebration of trans femininity, though, and I found that extremely inspiring. As someone who has a lot of difficulty with femininity in any form, it was very enjoyable to see people, well, enjoying femininity. At the same time, it was also very healing to see femininity celebrated in a way that didn't feel like everyone was in a cult. In her work, Gretchen Felker-Martin describes cisness as very sterile, and while I don't always feel that way, it does apply to how I find a lot of just-for-us-girls depictions of cis femaleness. This celebration of trans femininity was free of that sterility, and really wanted to both enjoy and interrogate femaleness. I loved reading that part of the book. It made femininity feel like a gift, one I willingly gave away. Reading this book was like watching someone try on a dress I'd donated to a consignment shop, a dress I hated, and watching their expressions fill up with light when they tried it on. I've never felt like that before, and it was wonderful.