LoveReading Says
Set in modern-day New York, Detransition, Baby is a detailed portrayal of the multiplicity of motherhood and queer relationships, analysed through the lens of three trans and cis women. It's about the messiness and scope of gender identity in a gender limiting world, the complexity of trans modes of being, as it explores the murky depths of taboo and humanity.
I loved how intricate and mentally stimulating this novel was. It’s use of description and symbolism added a cogent layer of profundity to the story. Such as the way it expounds upon Reese’s “Sex in the City problem”, the desire all women have to find their purpose in life, which for Reese, a trans woman, is to become a mother. Also compelling is Ames’s “baby elephant” analogy, with its commentary on the lack of the “mother figure” within the white trans community and how motherhood is sometimes sought within romantic relationships. Reese and Amy’s relationship, before Amy detransitioned and became Ames, was a romantic attraction built upon a proxy mother-daughter bond. Reese has always wanted to be a mother whereas Ames constantly looks for a parent in their intimate partners. The daring character development here suggests at the Freudian need that many people have, in both cis and trans relationships, to seek out parent or child figures in their partners and roleplay this dynamic whether subsconsciously or not.
"Reese had caught Amy so young in her womanhood,
in early plaincy, and motherhood had always been a code to their love.
Not just two women in love, but mother and daughter."
Peters brilliantly characterizes dialogue, giving the reader a clear sense of each character's personality and insecurities through their expressions i.e. Reese's defensive and witty cynicism, Ames's placating reasonableness and Katrina's no-nonsense steeliness. These characters are appealing because of how flawed and murky they are and because Peters gives us a window into their innermost, darkest thoughts which speaks to our own imperfections. As well as the efficacy of the dialogue in painting these characters, the many flashbacks to time periods before Katrina’s pregnancy also added greater depth. Peters transitions between time periods often and this meant lots of tense changes from the reflectiveness of the past to the immediacy of the present but the flow of the story never faltered.
Detransition, Baby was a transgressive and irresistible read, unafraid to push boundaries, to be distinctively unconventional and to hope for more.
Lois Cudjoe
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Torrey Peters Press Reviews
Detransition, Baby is emotionally generous, richly textured, and deeply intelligent - a vibrant and kaleidoscopic portrait of complicated women and their colliding lives. -- Claire Lombardo, New York Times-bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
Detransition, Baby updates and transcends (trans-scends!) the Sex and the City model, while fully delivering its many satisfactions! ... A noteworthy advance in the history of the novel! -- Elif Batuman
The smartest novel I've read in ages ... it manages to be utterly savage & lacerating while also conveying endlessly expanding compassion. It's kind of a miracle. -- Garth Greenwell
So good I want to scream -- Carmen Maria Machado
Riveting, insightful, and very funny ... an unforgettable portrait of three women, trans and cis, who wrestle with questions of motherhood and family-making. Destined to be a 21st century classic, Detransition, Baby will definitely keep you up late and might destroy your book club, but in a good way. -- Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Torrey Peters just took everything that couldn't be done, and did it ... Plenty of books are good; this book is alive. -- Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox
Peters confronts the unruliness of our desires, and our vitality as we struggle within their limits ... a dishy, engrossing new novel - New Yorker
Writing with alarming insight, Torrey Peters captures the grandiose, heartfelt and sometimes mangled aspirations of queer and trans people facing an unprecedented array of personal choice. By showing how gender transition (like divorce, or any transformative life event) can be simultaneously destabilizing and liberating, Peters makes trans culture relatable to all. A voraciously knowing, compulsively readable novel. -- Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick I love Detransition, Baby for its wit, its irreverence. And I love it even more for its reverence-its reverence for the quest for womanhood, motherhood, selfhood. Torrey Peters evokes these characters with such fullness and compassion that they felt like dear friends to me. This is an important book, and I couldn't put it down. -- Helen Philips, author of The Need Irresistible ... Perhaps Detransition, Baby is the first great trans realist novel? Witty, elegant and rigorously plotted, Peters's book breezily plays with the structural conventions of literary realism ... Peters's novel approaches the well trodden topic of baby fever, and although it renders the specificity of trans community and subjectivity in vivid, electric prose, its real appeal is much wider. -- Grace Lavery - Guardian
I loved [Detransition, Baby] so, so much - it's so smart, funny and sad about human nature and all our longings, hypocrisy, shame and sweetness. And it's fearlessly thought-provoking about gender. Such a literary feat and also such a great read. -- Curtis Sittenfeld Detransition, Baby is a landmark piece of trans literature - brutally honest and yet incredibly sensitive about trans living, tremendously funny and sexy as hell. -- Juliet Jacques, author of Trans: A Memoir A visceral, funny exploration of sex and gender through a triad of people - trans and cis -rocked by an unexpected pregnancy - Vanity Fair
Smart, funny, and bighearted. . . . A wonderfully original exploration of desire and the evolving shape of family [and] . . . a dishy contemporary drama. - Kirkus starred review
Possibly the most hotly anticipated work of transgender fiction ever - Pink News
Page-turning ... Through a careful narrative that laces humour into every paragraph, Peters paints a story of LGBT identity that will be engaging to any person who has struggled to define their place in the world - New Statesman
Fleishman is in Trouble meets Transparent in this eye-opening, gender-bending exploration of parenthood. - Oprah Magazine's Best Books of 2021
Written with verve and humour, it's a must-read for 2021. - Stylist
The distinctive storyline in this page-turner navigates gender, sex, relationships (from romantic to familial), and the commonly unaccepted ideas surrounding them. - Cosmopolitan Best Books of 2021
Detransition, Baby strikes to the heart of the moment. This conversation-shifting, taboo-busting novel is set to catapult its author, Torrey Peters - a Brooklyn-based trans writer whose two self-published novellas drew a cult following - into the mainstream ... Detransition, Baby should be on your reading list. It's an exuberant novel of ideas, desire and life's messy ironies - all filtered through Peters' astute, witty characters. - Evening Standard
Devastating, hilarious, touching, timely and studded with fun pop culture references and celebrity cameos, this is an acutely intelligent story about womanhood, parenthood and all the possibilities that lie within. - BookPage starred review
A landmark... Detransition, Baby is a comic and prodding take on transness and taboos. - i-D magazine
A riotously funny and fearless debut from Torrey Peters, who is clearly not afraid of polarising readers. - AnOther magazine
With heart and savvy, Detransition, Baby upends our traditional, gendered notions of what parenthood can look like. . . . Reese, Ames and Katrina feel to us more like friends than characters. - The New York Times Book Review
Ferociously smart and fearlessly queer ... this enthralling, extraordinary book is as queer as Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor, and as sharp as Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life. Superb. - Attitude
Detransition Baby is somehow both biting and deeply tender all at once... and feels up-to-the-second relevant. A lot of people recommended this book to me, and I will be recommending it to many, many others, queer, trans, straight, cis -- Amelia Abraham -
