September 5th, 2008
by
Liz Henry
Cycler is fabulous! I ripped through this book in about an hour and a half. Its main protagonist is an embarrassingly Judy-Blume-ish, mildly prissy teenage girl who plots with her best friend to get the prom date of her dreams – all the time hiding her dark secret – which is that she’s sort of like a werewolf, changing gender instead of species once a month right before her period. As a boy, Jack remembers everything about Jill’s life. But Jill hypnotizes herself, with her parents’ encouragement, into forgetting everything about her life as Jack.
It’s really trashy, and it’s done just *perfectly*.
The only thing I could have happily skipped was the whole skiing thing. Okay… skiing. *yawn* I guess it adds to the exotic allure of the exotic waspy setting. (Blume-ishly alien.)
The rest of it I could totally identify with. Being kind of an idiot! Major identity issues! Struggling to suppress memories and desire, parental horribleness all around sexuality and gender identity, secret(ish) burning crushes on friends!
If only I’d had this book when I was a teenager. I’m not sure how it would have been directly helpful, but it does give a good map for the possibilities of human relationships.
Huzzah, we have moved far beyond Marvin Redpost: Is He a Girl? (A perfectly acceptable gender-switching book – if you’re about 6 years old.)
I’m left thinking a lot about Jill/Jack’s mother and father, especially the mother’s role as oppressor of Jack — as the driving force behind the oppression, suppression, of Jill’s masculinity. But that’s just me, and my reaction from my experiences as a teenager. I can see that there are quite a few other things to react strongly to in the characters and events. Anyone read it? What did you think?
I might have to post again, this time behind a cut with spoiler warning.
Nominating for Tiptree, though I’m sure someone already has…
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- More blogging by
Liz Henry at
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Filed under assorted | Comments (4)
Have you read Bill’s New Frock, by Anne Fine? It’s about a boy who wakes up one morning to find she’s a girl: the next day he’s a boy again, but the novel is more about how things are different for boys and girls than it’s about gender-switching.
I haven’t read it. But your distinction about “things being different for girls and boys” makes me think about Cycler some more. Arrrgh, impulse to spoilers. I will start another post.
i just read it and was surprised at how many layers i got out of it. it’s really gossip girly on the surface, and then you notice how unreliable your narrators are: both of them.
here’s a spoiler: it took me a while to figure out that the jack/jill personality split was self-willed. even though jill explicitly said so, i needed to see it in action to understand that it was so.
[...] thing. Jack is seriously into the teen boy sex thing and there’s the whole bisexual issue. As Liz says it’s really trashy and it’s done just right – after you get past the first chapter and [...]