The most successful of us all are the ones who possess both and use either one of them when situation calls for.

I think within us there are characteristics of maleness and femaleness that guide the decisions we make in the course of our lives. Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgemental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful. Then she imagined her son as a talented, mythical hunter, his breasts trapped in a concealing vest, his clothes the green of striding forward, his heart the heart of a woman who could secretly direct his path in the ways of intuition and psychological insight. She imagined her daughter beautiful and grown up, in a scarlet satin gown, her male characteristics held secret under the clothing for a time when she might need a warrior’s strength and a man’s potent aggression. Whereas he struck out on his own to decide how to erase the frightening ambiguity in their child, she envisioned living with it as it was. When I finished the book however I am grateful that the cover designer has chosen it, because the book is a tender and empathetic story of a boy born hermaphrodite and as haunting and disquiet as the severe and unforgiving land with the quiet horror of events (and there are many) that happened in Wayne’s life.Įverything Treadway refused to imagine, Jacinta imagined in detail enough for two of them. Annabel is such a pretty name and the haunting cover of the book seems inept for such tender book. The blurbs first captured me, along with other books of the same subject as “ Middlesex” and “ Orlando” I am intrigued with this one. As Wayne approaches adulthood, the duality of sexuality creates more confusion and dilemma as the woman inside him begins to cry out.

But as Wayne grows up within the hyper-male hunting culture of his father, his shadow shelf – a girl he thinks of as ‘Annabel’ – is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to go through surgery and raise the child as a boy named Wayne.

Only three people share the secret – the baby’s parents, Jacinta and Treadway, and a trusted neighbour, Thomasina. In 1968, into the beautiful, spare environment of remote Croydon Harbour, a coastal village in Labrador in the far north-east of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy or girl, but both at once. ‘Nothing I do with Economics is going to change what I am’ – Wayne (page 352)

Annabel kathleen winter summary