Frighten the Horses
a much-needed book about later-in-life transition, at once enjoyable to read and well-written on the sentence level ... Radclyffe writes movingly about parenting and the emotional risks of every step he takes toward affirming his maleness ... But given that this narrative begins in 2011 and not 1950, Radclyffe’s professed unawareness about queer existence can strain credulity ... The book is riddled with jarring anachronisms...Still, as a testament to midlife transition — especially in a time when so much of the cultural conversation around gender rights focuses on young people — Radclyffe’s memoir offers a valuable alternate narrative to the loss and pain that queer history has too often insisted on.
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Poised and witty ... Kept me up all night, devouring the memoir’s pages. I was spellbound as Radclyffe deconstructed each layer of himself ... The diarist’s gift for immediacy and vivid detail comes through in the memoir’s polished prose ... Everything is intensely observed ... The details in these scenes contribute to their deep humor, too ... The author’s empathy in turn evokes understanding and compassion from the reader ... More than an important book: it is one of the most compelling of recent memoirs, a story that shows both the pain and the joy that follow when you decide to become fully yourself.
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[A] sincere and searching memoir ... There’s great power in Radclyffe’s vulnerable and generous portrayal of his trans experience, throughout which there are more dimmer-switch dawnings than flashes of light, and readers will be grateful for it.
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