Review: The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff
Before I read this book, my understanding of transgender and the transgendered community was very limited. All I knew of it was through social media posts I had read about Caitlyn Jenner and I felt this hadn’t given me a great awareness of the difficulties transgendered people face.
I read the book primarily because I wanted to see the new film starring Eddie Redmayne (FYI I am a huge Eddie Redmayne fan and anyone who disagrees that he is an amazing actor clearly doesn’t know what acting is). I wasn’t expecting a lot. I just wanted a rough idea of where the story went. What I got instead was an immersive tale which evoked a reaction in me that I had not felt before.
What I find incredible about this book, aside from the fact that it’s an author debut, is that it manages to capture how it feels to have been born into the wrong body, how the axis and world is titled and not quite right and you felt as though you were Einar, there was something disparate and separate about you from the rest of the world. It was a harrowing and heart-breaking understanding and realisation of what transgendered people face, not just in the early 1900s but a realisation that also translates into current issues surrounding gender. It was a book that had both the period drama aspect alongside the translatable modernity of the issues it presented. All of the characters were well made – I suppose this helps when the characters are loosely based on those in reality - in particular Greta who was the anchor and prow of the book for me in her effortless and selfless support of the man and woman she loved in her relationship. Whilst Einar ,at first glance, seemed a weak character, he proved to be the strongest of all, enduring a life he’d been given that was not his, enduring a secret and knowledge that he was not the person he’d been made to be and undergoing dangerous and life-altering surgery.
If you have an unfamiliarity of transgender – what it entails, what it feels like, how it affects the surrounding people, then I would highly recommend this novel for its easy and welcoming approach to the subject. By all means I am not suggesting that once you read the book you will become an expert in transgender issues, but it will give you a well-established and well-written insight into the world of someone transgendered.
For this reason, The Danish Girl is my January pick of the month.
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