Shelving: Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin

(TW: There's a pretty graphic and brutal rape scene in the book.)

I picked up Golden Boy  by Abigail Tarttelin after reading Hida's glowing review for Autostraddle. In a nutshell, it's about an intersex teenager named Max (referred to as "he" throughout the book) who becomes pregnant after being raped by a family friend. It's beautifully written -- I'm struggling to find anything wrong here. (I think the multiple first person POV was kind of a risk, but Tarttelin pulls it off with grace.) The books brings up questions about sex, gender, and identity, and what those things mean; and the frightening, and sadly all-too common, issue of corrective rape. Most notably, though, I think Tarttelin created a wonderfully nuanced character in Max, which is more than I can say about that other famous book about an intersex character. Max is incredibly believable, and he doesn't fall victim to a lot of the cliches that plague other novels with characters who are sexual or gender minorities. (I realize I'm lumping trans* and intersex characters together here, but there are so few books out there that get it right.) Ultimately, he has a supportive family, finds love, and finds himself.

Edited: 8/19/13