Frighten the Horses is a trans man’s coming of age story, about a housewife who comes out as a lesbian and tentatively, at first, steps into the world of queerness. With growing courage and the support of his newfound community, Oliver is finally able to face the question of his gender identity and become the man he is supposed to be.
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.
