For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself. Sante's memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment.
Her memoir is moving for many reasons, but primarily for its observations about aging and vanity, as seen through the separated colors of a prismatic lens ... Vividly written ... One of the things that make this memoir convincing is that it is, on a certain level, unconvincing. Sante is a writer with a lot of peripheral vision ... It’s a story worth following, to watch her ring the bells that will still ring. Her sharpness and sanity, moodiness and skepticism are the appeal.
With its focus on gender transition, this is a timely but timeless memoir ... A poignant but forceful portrait of a life liberated from shame and fear ... The book reads like one lengthy confession ... This structural choice carries the reader through the memoir’s bleakest moments. We’re better able to pay unflinching attention and absorb the bitterness of Sante’s life without any reassurance or handholding on the part of Sante. It’s also her frank and inviting voice that hooks the reader.
Arresting ... At times accompanying Sante on the many U-turns and dead ends she leads the reader into can be exhausting: Just as you think she’s finding resolution, there is another caveat.
