Detransition, Baby Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Torrey Peters (Author), Renata Friedman (Narrator), Profile Audio (Publisher)

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Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn't hate. She'd scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart, and three years on, Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina's pregnant. Could the three of them form an unconventional family - and raise the baby together?

Listening Length

12 hours and 31 minutes
Author

Torrey Peters
Narrator

Renata Friedman
Audible release date

21 January 2021
Language

English
Publisher

Profile Audio
ASIN

B08TCJRLBL
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	12 hours and 31 minutes
Author	Torrey Peters
Narrator	Renata Friedman
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	21 January 2021
Publisher	Profile Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B08TCJRLBL
Best Sellers Rank	1,520 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 4 in LGBTQ+ Literature & Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 133 in LGBTQ+ Fiction (Books) 921 in Teen & Young Adult (Books)

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Top reviews from Australia

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Rachel Thomson

An exquisite reflection on womanhood

Reviewed in Australia on 5 November 2021

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This is my book of the year. Beautiful Russian, thoughtful, perceptive ... I couldn’t love it more. I’ll be buying it for everyone.

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Mr. D. Le Dosquet-Bergquist

Good read

Reviewed in Australia on 30 April 2021

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Good characters, easy read.

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I can’t wait to read what Torrey Peters does next. She’s an essential read to me now.

Reviewed in Australia on 4 May 2021

‘Detransition, Baby’ by US author Torrey Peters came out in January of this year and has become perhaps the most buzzed-about book of the moment – and not necessarily for the best of reasons.

This book came on my radar – rather deliciously, in hindsight – when it was one of 16 titles longlisted for The UK Women's Prize for Fiction, and received backlash from trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). Peters – a trans woman, writing about trans identity – dealt with the backlash with absolute aplomb in interviews and essays (as for iNews), and I simply had to know what this book was, that had won the admiration of so many readers and booksellers I trust, and the scorn of bigoted communities I despise.

Turns out – ‘Detransition, Baby’ is one of the most original, chaotic, luscious, and confronting reading journeys I’ve ever had the joy to experience. It’s a book that when I was reading it and had to put it aside, I’d keep thinking what I’d just read in that chapter and I’d count down the hours until I could crack it open again. It’s a book that when I finished reading, I was bereft. It’s the rare experience to know while you’re in the middle of something for the first time, that you’ll crave this moment of newness and wish you could go back to experience it anew all over again.

‘Detransition, Baby’ is the story of three very different characters orbiting one another. There’s Reese – a trans woman living in New York whose long-term, five-year lesbian relationship with another trans woman ended years ago, when her partner decided to detransition and become a cis male. Reese is now aimless and slightly self-destructive, partnering up with married cis men who treat her rough and keep her secret.

Then there’s Ames – who when Reese knew him her name was Amy, and she was a trans woman and Reese’s long-term partner. A violent encounter had Ames detransitioning and cutting off all ties with their previous trans community, Reese included. Ames has been living in a somewhat liminal existence, but a slight grounding came when he started a clandestine affair with his married cis boss, Katrina – who does not know that Ames was once Amy.

Katrina is even more shocked when she gets pregnant and Ames is the father, since she assumed that he was infertile for his allusions to being unlikely to progenate. But conceive they have, and now the three of them – Ames, Katrina, and Reese – have a baby on the way. Because Ames has declared that he likely can’t go through with parenthood (and not that even more abstract concept, fatherhood) without the presence of Reese, the last person he was meant to start a family with.

That’s the basic gist of the story – and forgive me if this sounds caustic for the pronouns, but I’m meaning to only refer to general concept when I say; ‘Three Men and a Baby’ 1987 film vibes. Which was itself meant to pull laughs from the supposedly ~ToPsY tUrVy~ flip of gender-roles to have three bachelors care for a baby, what madness! Peters and ‘Detransition, Baby’ is taking a similar premise but going, obviously, deeper and playing with gender-roles again and archetypes throughout society as she plays with what it means to be a family. Even in theory. And actually; ‘Surprise, baby!’ plots abound in literature, from the Virgin Mary of the Bible to Les Misérables and Jean Valjean becoming a single-father to Cosette. It is a truly ingenious plot-‘trope’ that Torrey Peters has designed to launch this far-reaching millennial story.

And ‘Detransition, Baby’ is very much a millennial story … I eye-roll slightly (and still) when people say that Sally Rooney is “the first great millennial novelist,” because ‘Normal People’ was ~fine~ but honestly, Torrey Peter’s book pulled far more introspection out of me, and moved me in a way that Rooney just could never. In Torrey Peter’s novel I found a deep and cathartic confrontation of womanhood. Reese is undoubtedly the MVP of the novel, even though I came to love all three main players, it’s Reese who has the most poignant and sometimes toxic thoughts on femininity, and what it means to be a woman. It's Reese who is snarky-elegance, encased in fragile ego and a yearning so bone-deep it's beautiful.

When we meet her, Reese is fully-aware that she is entering into unhealthy relationships with cis men who are using her. At the start she’s the ‘other woman’ to a Manhattan Cowboy who has already contracted (barely detectable) HIV from a previous trans partner, and is again cheating on his wife who is currently trying to conceive via IVF, he’s now cheating on her with Reese. In Reese’s story of sexual encounters with this man and others like him, ‘Detransition, Baby’ often becomes fairly erotic and highly charged, as Reese enters into slight BDSM bedroom relations with these men. At one point she likens this to a desire to be meek and hurt; the ultimate feminine is to be vulnerable, aggression is the male response. Now – just because it’s written doesn’t mean it’s true, or that Torrey Peters actually believes this herself. But her character Reese does, deep down. Reese – like a true millennial – is in many ways caught between her boomer upbringing (the cusp of a bygone era of almost-Betty Draper’s and the American housewife she still secretly views as the pinnacle of womanhood) and a new generation of ‘baby transes’ for whom she is a sort of mother-figure and matriarch, but who have a very separate world outlook to her which she often, hilariously, comments on.

The history of Ames/Amy and Reese is also a delectable and depressing story-thread in the book … possibly mistaken for soap-opera, but is actually Peters accurately and brilliantly inviting readers into the realities of queer communities and tangled relations. Ames is as much an enigma to himself as Reese and readers, but brings their story of childhood, young adulthood, transitioning and then detransitioning so honesty to the page that it reads painful, for being so bared.

If I had any issues with the novel, it was something that author Roxane Gay had a near-perfect explanation of on their Goodreads review; “Some of the storytelling was too... indulgent is maybe the word I'm looking for, like, when you're in the groove as a writer, loving what you're writing, digging down into it, and you don't know where to stop. But that's okay!”

It’s true; some of the monologues and character dialogues are a little too neat and sharp, I’d call it rehearsed if it wasn’t novel-form. But at the same time, much of these thoughts being made to a fine-point are so important that I was willing to let it pass when character maybe went on a little too long or too-articulately.
"Every year, the list of murdered trans women, most of color, grows longer. Among those cases, the number of victims who were misgendered in their own obituaries is greater than the number of victims whose murderer has been identified."

Finally; I just want to acknowledge that I know this book won’t be for everyone. Maybe it’s too erotically-charged, sex-scenes are more graphic than some people want in their literary reads. Maybe people won’t want to engage with the ideas Reese is musing on about what it means to be a woman; ingrained in her from a myriad lived-experiences and distorted pop-culture that she’s absorbed and can’t dispel so easily when it’s ingrained in society and ideals of femininity. Maybe it’s just the audaciously lush and brilliantly true-chaotic depictions of queer communities and families that won’t sit well with people – for their own issues.

Fine.
Okay.

I think those people are missing out – but at the same time I’ve been genuinely moved to see so many more take this book and just ~run~ with it. Which was my experience too. One of sheer joy and adoration for Torrey Peters and what she’s done here; this genuinely enjoyable and fabulous reading experience that had me gasping and crying and missing these characters as soon as I finished (but I am so glad it’s getting the TV adaptation treatment, it must be said. If only so I can experience them anew, again.)

‘Detransition, Baby’ unlocked a lot in me. Not just a cathartically deep-down enjoyable read, but also an and edge-of-your-seat chaotic reading in which I was desperate to turn the pages and so joyful at being in this author’s world, nested in their words and characters. It is hands-down one of my favourite-ever experiences that I won’t soon forget, and I can’t wait to read what Torrey Peters does next. She’s an essential read to me now.

2 people found this helpful

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Sharon

A beautifully written, heartfelt and original book

Reviewed in Australia on 21 January 2021

This book exceeded all my expectations. The plot seemed kooky and could have been silly in the hands of a lesser writer. Torrey Peters manages to create an interesting plot with believable likable flawed characters. this book addresses a lot of issues - gender, trans, queerness, family. Sometimes it is in the form of a sort of lecture, but not like I, the reader, is being lectured. More like I was being quietly, enjoyably educated. That makes it sound like this book is unbearably earnest - it isn't. I found myself reading the chapter about doTERRA out loud on a Zoom call, because it was the funniest thing I've read.

And then, near the end, I got worried that the author was going to stuff it all up. That's how invested I was in the story. But the ending is perfect.

Helpful

Krtek the Reader

A WORTHY PRIZE CONTENDER

Reviewed in Australia on 18 January 2022

I'll be honest, I wouldn't have read this book had it not been for the vile transphobic response to its inclusion on the Women's Prize longlist, but I am so glad I did. One of those novels I couldn't wait to get back to reading at every available opportunity.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer

Women's feminity is not validated by male violence

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 May 2021

Verified Purchase

I enjoyed the first few chapters of this book. It is well written and I was learning things about Trans identity that I, as a born female woman, was not fully aware of. The characters are engaging and jump to life from the first few sentences about them.
But....
I felt sick to my stomach when I encountered the deranged logic espoused by the main character considering male violence against women. I got the nasty impression that the writer feels it is almost a Cis privilege to have their femininity validated by being beaten by men; that it allows them to feel dainty and weak and therefore more feminine.
At a time when women are too frequently being killed by men, often in domestic violence incidents where a controlling partner exercises his most final and total method of control, I was disgusted by one character's wish that a man would love her enough to kill her. I doubt any of the unfortunate real life victims, whose lives were cut short by the men who "loved" them, would agree.

100 people found this helpful

sparklehorse

Awful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 May 2021

Verified Purchase

No better than a mills and boons badly written with the only twist being it wasn’t about heterosexuals. Waste of money don’t do it

27 people found this helpful

Fans of Emma Jane Unsworth will love this

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 January 2021

Verified Purchase

I loved this book! While the description might make make the plot seem niche or confusingly complex, the writing is so precise and perceptive, and each of the three main characters so vividly imagined, that a novel that seems to have very specific resonances quickly engaged me and told me a lot about myself (as a straight white cis woman) and the world I live in. Torrey Peters offers a huge number of insights into many aspects of modern womanhood, and she does it entertainingly and respectfully: each of the three leading characters are flawed - sometimes hugely so - but we are never invited to judge, laugh at or dislike them. Instead, everyone is taken seriously and we are invited to see society through their eyes, to walk in their shoes. This book is dedicated to divorced women, and the author draws parallels with the predicament of the trans woman and the divorcee - both have had to rethink their pasts and work towards a better future, with all the challenges these things involve. I was persuaded by that comparison, and appreciated Peters's empathy for divorced women - a group who, like trans women, aren't well represented in fiction.
Overall, if you like intelligent, witty fiction which focuses on the lives of women (like Emma Unsworth's Adults) you would enjoy this.

17 people found this helpful

Laura Fenwick

Beautifully honest story of motherhood

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 May 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a story of Reese, a trans woman living in New York who thought she had it all, almost, until her relationship with Amy ends. Now in self-destruct mode, she’s using sex with random (often married) men to avoid how lonely she is.

At the end of their relationship, Amy made the decision to Detransition and now, as Ames, is having an affair with his recently divorced boss, Katrina.

When Katrina unexpectedly falls pregnant, Ames isn’t sure he can be a father, as much as he feels he wants to be a parent with Katrina. His solution is to ask his ex, Reese, to co-parent with them. This will support his need to not be seen as the traditional male father figure, will fulfil Reese’s deepest desire to be a mum and Katrina won’t be alone in raising a baby.

The story jumps between present day, through the first trimester of the pregnancy, to Reese and Amy’s courtship and relationship, and with glimpses into their childhoods.

Although I found this to be a little preachy and pretentious at points, I loved it. I completely get why it was Long Listed for @WomensPrize for Fiction.

I loved Reese. I loved her story, I rooted for her, I felt her longing to be a mum and wanted her to find that happiness and fulfilment.

Ames story opened my eyes to why someone would chose to Detransition, how much someone can struggle with their truest identity. It opened my eyes as to why the triad parenting would seem like the optimal solution which, to be honest, I was a bit unsure would make sense when I first started reading this.

Katrina might have bugged me a little 😂

This is a story of motherhood, and I thought the story was told so honestly and openly and beautifully and I definitely think you should read it, if you haven’t already.

12 people found this helpful

Carolyn Percy

Brilliantly written, interesting & enlightening

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 January 2021

Verified Purchase

Detransition, Baby is brilliantly written - seriously, the writing deserves a star all to itself - interesting and definitely enlightening. It does seem that when someone of a marginalised group writes something, there is pressure to make it about that group's universal experience, which strikes me as not really possible. Detransition, Baby is definitely focused on a narrower slice of that experience, but through the micro - the story of these three complex, very flawed characters - universal, macro elements emerge that everyone can relate to.

12 people found this helpful

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Detransition, Baby Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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