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Title: Annabel

Author: Kathleen Winter

Narrator: Laurence Bouvard

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-10-11

Publisher: Random House AudioBooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote coastal Labrador in the far north-east of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people share the secret the babys parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to go through surgery and raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows up within the hyper-male hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self a girl he thinks of as Annabel is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. As Wayne approaches adulthood, and its emotional and physical demands, the woman inside him begins to cry out. The changes that follow are momentous not just for him, but for the three adults that have guarded his secret

Haunting and sweeping in scope, this is a first novel as much concerned with its characters as it is with their predicament, as much about humanity as it is about a rigidly masculine culture that shuns the singular and the unique. Told with great elegance and empathy, Annabel is the powerfully moving story of one persons struggle to discover the truth and the strength to change, to find tenderness in a severe and unforgiving land.

Members Reviews:

A Book Worth Reading Again!

was enthralled with this story, not only because of the subject matter, but also because of the way it was written. Kathleen Winter wrote sensitively about a child born with both feminine and masculine genitalia and how he and his parents coped with his unique sexuality in a community in Labrador, more isolated than most. What was also different about the writing here was the author's choice to use the omniscient third person point of view. It allowed the reader to get into the heads of so many of the characters and add a dimension that is often missing in these kinds of stories. It's a book I hope to read again. I rarely read a book twice unless I find the writing exceptional. Highly recommended.

Kudo's to K. Winter. This is NOT a sex novel.

I was unsure about this book when I began to read it. It was recommended by a professional friend as a sociological study. I expected a transgender rant, but was intrigued to discover a well written clinical assessment of the identity conflicts caused in a child by unbalanced parental expectations and improper medical distortion of a child's body at birth. The father's need for a son eclipsed the child's need for correct gender assignment. The attending physician's surgical imposition on the body of the infant without thorough exam to determine the nature of the choices was nothing less than criminal negligence of the most crippling kind. The miracle is the psychological balance sustained by the principal character through the nightmare of biological confusion and his adaptive balance after the error was adjusted. This book avoided degrading into a Gothic eroticism by the author's compassionate narrative of the experience of Annabel's emerging integrity defined in honest self-perception.