Preachy novel of a lesbian teen's pornographic mind, pass this up and read Dickens or Hawthorne instead.
Readers may find many lines in Herman's novel difficult to understand; they're written in English, but the ideas are straight from leftist academia. For example, Flor, Eleanor's mother's lesbian friend, is "making room for myself in spaces that try to exclude me" (19). Come again? Also, why Eleanor would say "my body will feel less like mine" (56) when she would begin to menstruate is an idea that must have originated from a leftist professor, not a teenaged girl.
Maybe the preachiness of the novel comes from the author's leftist ideology. According to the "About the Author" section, Herman is "looking to disembowel the architecture of gender and what it means to queer the body" [226]. Wha-what? Since such a troubled woman mentions "my own suicide attempts" [224] in the "Acknowledgements", the compassionate reader, therefore, hopes this novel is, if not of literary, then at least of cathartic value.
An annoying grammar error occurs throughout the book. Are constructions like "Dad had Gret and I" (66) deliberate to show that Eleanor is just a stupid teenager, or is it ignorance on the author's part? The former may be the cause; after all, Eleanor thinks that being "a feminist is someone who believes in the equal rights of men and women" (80), omitting completely the main purpose of feminism in today's culture (forcing everybody to accept abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever). Even more ignorantly, Eleanor asks if abortions can be obtained at Planned Parenthood (114). Who in the world does not know that Planned Parenthood is primarily an abortion business?
The novel has the typical elements that are supposed to attract teen readers: an abortion sequence which spans four pages (112-5), Eleanor's lesbian episode with a stranger (142-3), or another long and laughable lesbian sex scene (188-191).
Recommendation: read only if you must write a report for school or college.
This was the fourth of five novels I examined for a presentation before a scholarly audience on recent transgender literature and the right-to-life issues. My recommendation is that it is neither worthwhile nor necessary to purchase this novel (especially not from Amazon, which supports pro-abortion politicians), but pro-life readers may want to borrow it from their local libraries instead.