What a beautifully written book. The theme in the foreground of the story's plot is about gender identity, but there is a larger theme in the background, which is an exploration of identity writ large--how we find out who we are, how we try to live in a way that is truthful to that understanding, and the difficulties of both of these efforts in the midst of other people's needs and expectations of us. ( )

Mentioned in “A Month of Sundays”

It took me a while to settle into this novel, it was about 100 pages before I was enjoying reading it and had figured out clearly who all the different characters were. Mary / Martin and her family, the Wards, Sonny, her father, Estelle, her mother and Tim, her brother. The novel begins with the ridiculous scene of them gathering in a Suffolk field in February 1952, remembering the dead king with a two minute silence that may or may not have been at the correct time. It was in this field in this 'unsynchronised silence' that Mary realised she was a boy, not a girl. Other characters appear, the Loomis family, the local butchers and baby Pearl and her mother Irene and Mr Harker who made cricket bats. They are all from the same Suffolk village. The novel moves through the years, often jumping a couple and we hear from different characters, mostly Mary / Martin and Estelle but occasional Tim. Being yourself in a small village was always going to be problematic and characters moved to London and then the USA, where under big skies opportunities open out. Once I settled into this novel I couldn't put it down. The theme of light and dark kept coming up. The psychiatrist with the dark room lit only by fish tanks. The room in Earl's Court Mary rented that had little natural light but sounds filtered in through am airwell. In Tennessee the sky was everywhere. ( )

Comples, multi-layered anf multi-faceted, but eminently readable. ( )

A poignant tale following a group of characters as they attempt to break free of the constraints and expectations of an English rural backwater, by turns poignant, funny and beautifully observed. The central story of Mary/Martin, a boy growing up in a girl's body, is particularly moving. ( )