Frighten the Horses

April 1, 2024

Radclyffe's memoir is a trans man's coming-of-age story that details his childhood, the expectations his family had of him, the moments he realized he did not want the path laid out for him, and his journey toward a truer life. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 8, 2024
Radclyffe (Adult Human Male) reflects on coming out as trans after starting a family in this intimate personal history. Born to wealthy parents in England, Radclyffe lived an early life marked by stability and privilege. But by adolescence, he harbored crushes on girls and dreamed of himself as a boy, growing “terrified of making a false move, of doing or saying something that would reveal me to be different.” After finishing school, Radclyffe tended bar and joined a motorcycle club as their only woman-presenting member. Depressed and aimless in his 30s, Radclyffe grasped at security by marrying the handsome, wealthy Charles. The pair had four children and eventually relocated to Connecticut, where Charles chased professional success and Radclyffe was relegated to the domestic sphere. Confronted by worrisome physiological symptoms stemming from years of self-repression, Radclyffe first accepted that he was gay, then that he was transgender, and found peace through friends in New York City, a countercultural bookstore in the East Village, and queer affinity groups like the Late Bloomers. Ultimately, he divorced Charles. Radclyffe’s moving devotion to his children (“I didn’t so much guide them as encourage them to guide themselves”) lends the resonant coming-out narrative additional weight. Bolstered by poetic prose and offhanded candor, this story of late-in-life self-acceptance deserves a wide audience. Agent: Malaga Baldi, Baldi Agency.

Starred review from July 15, 2024
A transgender man comes to terms with his identity. Born into a wealthy English family, Radclyffe began life as a girl in denial about her crushes on other women. After coming out as gay, the author visited the Bluestockings bookstore in New York City, a short train ride from the Connecticut home where Radclyffe was masquerading as a housewife despite suffering from hair and weight loss and random moments of pain associated with gender dysphoria. At Bluestockings, the author met and began dating a woman. When they slept together, Radclyffe imagined having a phantom penis, which, in retrospect, he recognized as a possible sign that he was transgender. However, only after getting a divorce and falling in love with another woman did he come out as a man. Although his relationship didn't survive his transition, Radclyffe found acceptance among his chosen family, his parents, and his children. Perhaps most importantly, he discovered self-acceptance and learned that his identity didn't negate his ability to be a loving and effective parent. "The world had tried to tell me that I couldn't care for myself," he writes, "and also for my children, that I couldn't be trans and queer and be a source of stability....Whatever my failings as a parent--and I knew there had been many--my children would walk out into the world armed with all the tools I'd once lacked: courage, curiosity, the confidence to form their own opinions and trust their own instincts." This book is consistently frank, vulnerable, perspicacious, and insightful, covering an impressive variety of aspects of the transgender experience in intimate, lyrical language and dry, compassionate humor. The author's analysis of privilege is particularly refreshing, as is his description of transitioning as a parent. A stunning memoir about discovering one's identity late in life.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2024

Radclyffe's (Adult Human Male) memoir about gender and transition describes how he first repressed, then finally accepted his transgender identity in his fourth decade of life. Assigned female at birth, he first followed the same path as many women: marrying a man, giving birth to four children, and becoming a stay-at-home parent who took on the brunt of household responsibilities. His repressed thoughts and denials finally took their toll, however, in the manifestation of a physical illness, with symptoms such as hair falling out in clumps, an inability to eat, and mood swings that often resulted in tears. The cause of the illness was a mystery until Radclyffe had an epiphany one day while watching a motorcycle rally. This triggered a cascade of self-realizations that he explored over the next 10 years, including recognizing that he was sexually attracted to women and eventually coming to see himself as a trans man. VERDICT Radclyffe's riveting, moving memoir about his journey of self-discovery is a page-turner that reads like a novel.--Katy Duperry

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2024
Radclyffe's sincere and searching memoir of coming out in midlife before ultimately transitioning embraces the sensations, emotional and physical, of the urge to live as his true gender and then of actually doing so. Parenting four young children and living as a woman married to fellow Brit Charles, Radclyffe sensed a growing desire to be with women. So began a protracted period of staying together for the kids (and, to a lesser degree, suburban Connecticut appearances) before Charles agreed to Radclyffe's quest to explore the New York City queer scene and, eventually, a divorce. With women, things at first simply clicked, but the beginning of the author's transition marked the end of a long-term relationship. Radclyffe looks back on a privileged English childhood and remembers all the messages he knew to ignore, but, in the present, his parents surprise him. He bookends the memoir with scenes of his own kids, who age from young children to teenagers in the decade the book covers, often questioning and enlightening the author in the way only kids can. There's great power in Radclyffe's vulnerable and generous portrayal of his trans experience, throughout which there are more dimmer-switch dawnings than flashes of light, and readers will be grateful for it.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.