Annabel (2010)

"After the operation, Wayne felt the power of names in a new way. His father ate his evening toast, sometimes with a kipper. Jacinta crocheted. They did not look outside at the night. Wayne tried to remember a time before he knew the word for sky. You explained away the mystery of the night, he thought, by naming its parts: darkness, Little Dipper, silver birch."

Kathleen Winter's Annabel is a delicate and sensitively told story of ambiguity. It centers on Wayne Blake, born with both male and female sex organs and raised as a boy by his parents, Jacinta and Treadway. Treadway is the one who makes the decision to raise the baby as a male and then spends Wayne's childhood trying to impress upon him the ways to be a "man." Jacinta, meanwhile, longs for the daughter who never was while becoming lonelier and lonelier in her marriage and Thomasina, the neighbor who delivered Wayne and is privy to the family's secret, becomes a beacon of acceptance for Wayne, though she struggles over how much to tell him.

Identity is obviously a major theme in Annabel and Winter allows both Wayne's male identity and his female identity, known as Annabel, to flower as the novel progresses. Though the secrecy that surrounds him for much of his life causes him some pain, primarily through his inability to understand why it is that he seems to be a frequent disappointment to his father, Wayne is more or less at peace with his nature. He is not afraid or ashamed of his female self, though he longs to embrace that identity more fully than he feels that society would allow.

Annabel is a complex, thought provoking, and touching character study. Winter deals with the subject in a direct way and allows her characters to become fully fleshed and distinctly human. Annabel is a wonderful book about the yearning to belong, one which is relatable to anyone. It will grip from the first page and remain with you long after you've reached the last.