Annabel

Title: Annabel
Author: Kathleen Winter
Published: 2010. This edition by Vintage.
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 461




I saw this book several times in one of the big book shops in Helsinki, became instantly intrigued, and finally remembered to buy it once I found a cheaper copy. Books in Finland, sadly, tend to be damn expensive. And wow. I'd read that Winter's writing style is, at times, rather... what would be a good word for it... poetic? Kind of like a painting. And I was initially a little wary about this fact, but once I started the book and got used to her style, man. I was pretty much hooked. Read it in buses from work, between buses, in the evenings and in bed until I reached the end.


So yeah, I liked Annabel. It's about a child born in a remote part of Canada, in 1968, who is both male and female. The kid's parents more or less grudgingly decide to grow him as a boy, and name him Wayne, not telling him that there's a very real girl part to him as well. Only a few people know of this: the parents, a few doctors, and a neighbour who was present at the birth. She secretly gave Wayne the name Annabel, after her own child.


Wayne grows up taking pills he has no idea what they're for, but always feels that there's something in him that makes him different from the other boys. The book's mostly serious, but there were a few laugh-out-loud bits, and all the main characters are written beautifully. They're so real I felt I could just reach into the book and poke them. And, like many good books, it was over way too soon.




Wayne knew Donna Palliser could not see into the glass ball. He knew she was in the business, tonight, of being cruel. He did not like to see Agatha Groves made fun of  and did not mind giving Donna Palliser a change of topic. 'I dreamed I was a girl,' he said. 'I could see my sweater. It was a green sweater with glimmery buttons, like light changing underwater. I looked at my sandals and they were white. I was walking by a river. I tried to see my face in the river but I couldn't. No one was with me. I tried to run with the river. I picked one peak of water and ran beside it and I thought it was the same peak. But then I wasn't sure. I didn't realise I was a girl in the dream until I woke up. While I was waking up I remembered I'm a boy, and I was surprised for a minute, until I remembered that's what I always am when I'm awake.'