Truth is very rarely the point
Sarah Ditum reviews Grace Lavery’s book for the Times:
And there is so much penis here. Not just in the title (if there’s a better literary pun this year than A Heartbreaking of Work of Staggering Penis, I’ll be highly surprised), but all the way through. On the first page, Lavery is having penis trouble. Since starting on hormones, she’s been experiencing semi-erections: her penis (a phrase I pray I never get used to writing) feels “as though I were laying my own miscarried foetus across my hand”.
Ah yes that’s very Lavery. He knows it will infuriate, and that’s why he does it. He loves to taunt women that way.
While trans-inclusive feminist writers speak delicately about identity, Lavery goes on a taboo-trashing rampage. She doesn’t quite ascend to the outrageous heights of fellow trans author Andrea Long Chu (whose 2020 book Females: A Concern defined the “barest essentials” of “femaleness” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes”), but Lavery seems to have a good time trying to match them.
Life would be so dreary and empty if men like Chu and Lavery couldn’t taunt women and get applauded for it by people who consider themselves feminists.
… this is a relentlessly non-standard memoir. Chronology is smashed up, genres are rifled, truth is very rarely the point. “I’m not trying to be clever,” she says at one point, before adding, “obviously the book in general is an attempt to be clever”. But the fourth-wall breaking and self-referentiality gets tired fast: BS Johnson, but with narcissism instead of mordant self-loathing.
I suspect Lavery is too busy loathing women to have time to loathe himself. Besides…would he ever?
“In keeping with that online persona, this is not a book that can be bothered with the niceties. Lavery gleefully throws around her birth name (it’s Joseph, or Jos for short). Her stories about the effects of synthetic oestrogen are straight out of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus: “Within twenty-four hours [of starting hormones] I had bought a large spider succulent, an oil diffuser and a phial of lemongrass essential oil (or ‘essentialist oil’, you would call it).””
Haaaaaa-hahahahaha
Lort, Ophelia, always when I least expect it, you point me towards something so hilarious that I end up snorting and laughing for a good five minutes. Bravo, my friend!
That’s Sarah for you! One five minute laugh after another.