Annabel

Kathleen Winter's Annabel made the 2011 Orange Prize Short List. The Orange Prize for Fiction was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote English works of fiction by women around the world.

In March 1968, a baby is born to Jacintha and Treadway Blake  in the small Labrador village of Croyden Harbour. To almost everyone present at the birth, the baby appears a normal, healthy boy. Thomasina Blaikie, a close friend of the family and the midwife, is the first to notice that the baby has a penis and a vagina.

Treadway decides the easiest course of action is to name the baby Wayne and take him to the Goose Bay Hospital to have the necessary surgery so that he can be raised as a boy. Thomasina and Jacintha are not sure that this is the right course of action but go along with this plan, so Thomasina secretly baptises Wayne with the name Annabel, and Jacintha nurtures his feminine side when they are alone.

Wayne does not find out about his condition until he is 12 years old.

The theme of bridges is a natural fit in this story. Wayne is a lover of bridges. To be on a bridge is to be in the middle of two places, not completely in either location. Just as Wayne is neither fully male nor female.

There are a lot of things to love about this novel - it's gentle treatment of a taboo topic, the strong characters, the fact that it's set in a small Canadian village are just a few.  But, the thing I enjoyed most, was the fact that it is about sex without being overly sexual. There are a few shocking moments that may have caused a less talented author to falter, not so with Ms. Winter.

My only complaints surrounds Wayne's reaction to his situation. It seemed unreal,  he doesn't display any shock or anger on several occasion when it's seemed only natural that he would. Even after he's viciously assaulted he doesn't seem to feel the humiliation his father imagines him as having suffered. Perhaps, all of this is just part of him being naive.

4/5