Product Description

George Verry Smith, suburban schoolmaster, is bored; with his wife, his life, his job. Plagued by poison pen letters, suffused with lust for the woman next door, he lives only for Sunday, when he dresses up. On Sundays, George becomes Emily. The author won the Booker Prize for "The Elected Member".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #905383 in Books
• Published on: 1989-12-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 181 pages

Customer Reviews

Very old-fashioned take on sexual identity.
This is a curious novel and one which, although quite an engaging read, feels incredibly old-fashioned and has a rather dubious take on the subject of men who sexually abuse young boys. However, to do the piece justice there is at the heart of the novel a rather moving story of one man's quest for his true gender identity and his attempts to come to terms with the murder of his father. These two personal crises do provide a strong catalyst for the basic narrative and go some way in encouraging us to empathise with our protagonist.

The two central characters in the novel of George and Joy are both well defined with individual voices and dilemmas and both are certainly well-rounded and full of human frailties and failings. Their emotional complexities do allow us to identify with both characters although both feel incredibly cold for much of the time and the lack of warmth and passion in their basic make-up and their subsequent behaviour does at times make it quite an effort to remain engaged with their stories. George's father and his subsequent relationship with his mother certainly provide the kind of background to make both his coldness and his desire to dress in women's clothes very understandable. Indeed for both George and Joy the backgrounds very neatly fit the psychological profiles of their characters, making both feel very plausible if not particularly endearing. However, despite much of the piece being written in the first person by George (although interestingly switching to third person when he becomes Emily) I felt strangely distant from him and from Joy and despite the traumatic experiences presented didn't really care what happened to either of them.