a much-needed book about later-in-life transition, at once enjoyable to read and well-written on the sentence level ... Radclyffe writes movingly about parenting and the emotional risks of every step he takes toward affirming his maleness ... But given that this narrative begins in 2011 and not 1950, Radclyffe’s professed unawareness about queer existence can strain credulity ... The book is riddled with jarring anachronisms...Still, as a testament to midlife transition — especially in a time when so much of the cultural conversation around gender rights focuses on young people — Radclyffe’s memoir offers a valuable alternate narrative to the loss and pain that queer history has too often insisted on.
[A] sincere and searching memoir ... There’s great power in Radclyffe’s vulnerable and generous portrayal of his trans experience, throughout which there are more dimmer-switch dawnings than flashes of light, and readers will be grateful for it.
This book is consistently frank, vulnerable, perspicacious, and insightful, covering an impressive variety of aspects of the transgender experience in intimate, lyrical language and dry, compassionate humor. The author’s analysis of privilege is particularly refreshing, as is his description of transitioning as a parent. A stunning memoir about discovering one’s identity late in life.
Radclyffe’s moving devotion to his children . . . lends the resonant coming-out narrative additional weight. Bolstered by poetic prose and offhanded candor, this story of late-in-life self-acceptance deserves a wide audience.
