Annabel (2010)

In 1968, in a small town in Labrador, Canada, Treadway and Jacinta Blake have a child. But they find that their baby has both male and female genetalia, and make the difficult decision that their child should have surgery. They raise him as their son and call him Wayne. Only Treadway, Jacinta and a friend named Thomasina know the truth and Wayne is not told. However, as Wayne grows, he discovers an emotional part of himself – his female character, who he calls Annabel, after Thomasina’s deceased daughter.

As Wayne grows older, he and the three adults who share the secret are all affected in different ways, and each faces their own struggle to come to terms with the truth.

When I started this book, I was not sure whether I would like it or not, but as I read on, it pulled me in, and I found compelled to read more about Wayne and his family. The writing is spare, and very beautiful in parts, with the loneliness that the four main characters each feel reflected in the remote and sparsely populated land where they live.

Each character’s struggle manifests itself in different ways, as the book takes us through Wayne’s childhood, school years and beyond. In many ways, very little happens, but there is so much strangeness in the normalcy of their lives, contrasted with the unusualness of Wayne’s body. The story is haunting in parts, and I really felt that all of the characters were realistically and believably drawn; sometimes their behaviour seems questionable, but it’s hard not to wonder what any other ordinary person would do in their situation.

It’s hard to believe that this was a debut novel – it was so emotive and yet under-stated, and treated Wayne’s condition (for want of a better word) with delicacy and compassion. A book which I would definitely recommend. ( )

I'm conflicted. Beautiful but maybe falls into a weird trap. Review to come. ( )

Not at all what I expected. I did not love it, but it is still a good novel. Almost YA in its writing style, but the content is of course more adult. Interesting writing style -- mostly traditionally structured sentences, which is unusual for books of this caliber, which usually have fragments. The writing does shift as you read, and the sentences become more complex and lengthy. For all its description and fullness, I like that the "disturbing" scene is mostly dialogue and thought, which makes it sufferable. It's Labrador, but not fishing and ports -- hunting and small town, instead. It asks questions about gender and identity, but in a whisper, not a megaphone. It's unusual, and yet it's not. I thought it would be about the mother, but it's about the father. It's about contradictions. ( )

Kathleen Winter earned a literary trifecta, securing spots on all three major Canadian fiction prize shortlists, in 2010. Winter’s novel Annabel was a contender for The Giller Prize, The Governor General's Award for Literature and The Writer’s Trust Award. Winter’s book, her debut novel, was the only one contending for all three awards and it is a stunningly beautiful book.

From the jacket description: In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people are privy to the secret — the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows to adulthood within the hyper-masculine hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self — a girl he thinks of as Annabel — is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. Haunting, sweeping in scope, and stylistically reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, Annabel is a compelling debut novel about one person’s struggle to discover the truth in a culture that shuns contradiction.”

Annabel offers some hard themes for readers. It is the story of an intersex child born in a remote coastal Labrador village in 1968. Primarily, I feel, Winter has written an homage to self-determination and self-preservation. An intersex child is born with atypical reproductive anatomy – both male and female anatomy are present. Advocates for intersex infants argue against surgical alterations of gentalia and reproductive organs being performed in order to accommodate societal expectations of what it means to be male or female in the world. This choice forms the centre of Winter’s novel.

Jacinta Blake gives birth, in her bathtub, at home. Her closest friend, Thomasina, is assisting with the birth. Thomasina is the first one who notices the baby has both male and female genitals. She immediately begins to refer to the child as Annabel, in tribute to her own daughter who has recently died. Jacinta’s husband, Treadway, feels strongly the child should be raised male while Jacinta (and Thomasina) feel love for the daughter, Annabel. The infant, “Wayne”, receives surgery to make his body appear more fully male. He is also started on a regiment of hormones to keep his body more male than female. All of this is kept from Wayne while he is growing up but he is always aware of not feeling whole as he is. Thomasina, however, addresses the child as Annabel, when they are together privately.

In an interview for House of Anansi Press, Kathleen Winter was asked, “What do you hope readers will take away from their experience with Wayne and his shadow-self, Annabel?”
“I’d like readers to see Wayne/Annabel the way they see themselves, and look at the “other” gender within themselves. I feel point of view is everything, in life and in literature, and I hope the book treats the points of view held by its divergent characters with equal respect. In many ways, this book is, for me, about suspending judgment. When you understand why someone acts the way they do, even if the actions cause sadness or difficulty, then I think you can redirect your energy to something more fruitful than judgment. I also hope the reader will have the kind of reading experience I think books are really about: a connection with the characters and a suspension of the loneliness of being human. I hope this story, like all good stories, might give the reader a kind of relief and a joy.”
Winter set a large task for herself with Annabel. I feel she achieved perhaps more than she could have hoped for. Winter has created a wonderfully memorable story and Annabel (the character) is such a beautiful portrait of what it means to be human. Through Winter’s ability the reader feels the sadness, the loneliness but also the strength and the hope. ( )

Wow. What a fantastic, unique novel. There's a blurb on the back of my library copy that recommends [b:Annabel|7984373|Annabel|Kathleen Winter|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328033308s/7984373.jpg|12434360] to "fans of Jeffrey Eugenides's [b:Middlesex|2187|Middlesex|Jeffrey Eugenides|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1316727862s/2187.jpg|1352495]", and while the comparison is apt, this is a wholly different novel that stands on its own.

The story takes place in a small hunting town in Labrador, Newfoundland. It's a harsh society with rigid gender roles, where the men spend six months of the year living in isolated hunting cabins on the traplines and women give birth in their bathtubs at home and go right back to their duties the next day. In one of these bathtubs, an intersex child is born. The baby born to Treadway and Jacinta Blake is a "true hermaphrodite", possessing both male and female genitalia: one ovary, one testicle, a vagina, either a small penis or large clitoris, just the right size so as to be ambiguous. Faced with this unexpected dilemma, the family makes the difficult decision to raise the baby as a boy and arrange for a doctor to perform "normalizing" surgery. Baby Wayne gets his vagina sewn up and everyone hopes the whole affair is behind them. But it's pretty hard for a secret like that to stay hushed up, especially in such a small town. Puberty is hard enough for those whose bodies change according to typical biology, and it's something else entirely for those who don't conform to gender norms, as Kathleen Winter explores.

This was beautifully written and an absolute pleasure to read, which is surprising given the subject matter. There are definitely difficult, uncomfortable parts, and I cried more than once. I also had slight suspension of disbelief issues about one plot point: that whole auto-fertilization thing. Even with the anatomy Wayne is described as having in the book, it seems extremely far-fetched to me. For that, I think I would need to revisit Anne Fausto-Sterling's fantastic nonfiction, [b:Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality|49427|Sexing the Body Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality|Anne Fausto-Sterling|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170358978s/49427.jpg|134837].

There's a strange innocence in this book, in the way it breaks your heart and then warms it again. The characters are real, flawed yet completely sympathetic. Even Treadway, steadfast in his role as the harsh father figure, punishing Wayne for things he does that may be seen as too "feminine"... you can tell he does this out of love and because he knows that the world will be even harsher to someone who doesn't fit into its view of normality. His growth as a character is amazing to watch and was one of my favorite elements of the story.

This was really a fascinating study of the fluidity of gender. From the research I've done, it seems that intersex conditions may occur in up to 1% of births, depending on what studies you cite and what definition of "intersex" you use, since there's quite a spectrum of anomalies falling under that umbrella. For what is obviously not such a rare condition, it's surprising to me that there aren't more books out there dealing with this subject. While [b:Annabel|7984373|Annabel|Kathleen Winter|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1328033308s/7984373.jpg|12434360] does it well, it's also just a great coming of age story. ( )