RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewOnly once she’s established her plight as an adult does Goetsch reach back into her memories to color in her transition...This structural conceit helps Goetsch reframe her youth: We don’t first meet a boy and then a trans woman. By belatedly meeting the aloof 5-year-old who felt estranged from family, we’re armed with the necessary knowledge to better understand the author’s struggle ... As its title suggests, this achingly beautiful memoir is about a trans woman’s often vexed relationship with her own body ... Goetsch has a poetic sensibility that illuminates without simplifying ... \'What would it be like to be a girl?\' That question may have felt immense when she was younger, but here and now, Goetsch presents it with such clarity it bowls one over ... Even as the memoir remains firmly focused on Goetsch, This Body I Wore also tenderly sketches out a history of the budding trans communities that developed in the late 20th century ... Here is an excavated history that endures in the only way it could: in the fleeting memories of those who survived, who endured and who now, like Goetsch, thrive.
William Di Canzio
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewOnce di Canzio pushes past his borrowed characters’ figural greenwood, his goal in reanimating them becomes clearer. In following the couple beyond a hazily suggested happy ever after, di Canzio makes Forster’s wish for them all the more tangible as he shows these characters building a life for themselves on their own terms ... There’s a sweeping romantic vision here that’s as old-fashioned as it is refreshingly modern, with this war-torn couple pining away for each other as they hold their love in the highest esteem, in bold defiance of English laws and customs ... reads like an attempt to make these forgotten men feel less alone, to proliferate their stories. In nudist safe havens in the countryside at peacetime, codified arrangements between privates and majors during war, lurid encounters in Continental brothels while on leave and lively salon conversations about Hellenistic poetry post-armistice, the novel presents the many ways other \'outlaws\' like Maurice and Alec successfully, if tenuously, carved out spaces for themselves ... fiction as queer archaeology, demonstrating that looking back doesn’t necessarily mean looking backward.
A. O. Scott
MixedThe Los Angeles Review of BooksLeaving out female critics — not to mention queers, working-class critics, and African-American critics — means leaving out an entire history of criticism that pushes back against this autonomy and embraces art’s potential to speak to the power imbalances of cultural production.
