“Alex and I. Is it ok with you if we keep us separate? It makes...

“Alex and I. Is it ok with you if we keep us separate? It makes more sense.”

A little under a week ago, I posted about Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin. 

I thought my little soap box on diversity–with particular regard to books about intersex teens–was over. However, this morning I cracked open this book by Australian writer Alyssa Brugman. 

Holy hell, I did not know what I was getting into with this book. And, you know what? I can’t think of a more fantastic ride!

Alex is introduced to us in the first page as a girl who’s gone off her medication and is about to be given a Clinique makeover at Myers. We are then also introduced to other Alex who is male. It’s pretty clear, even from this point, that the two of them either share a body or a mind.

It’s the former. I can’t believe that a year ago I didn’t even know what intersex was. And, despite the fact that my autocorrect attempts to correct the word, I have no gone from reading Golden Boy, which I knew going in was about an intersex teen, to stumbling into this novel knowing only that it was GLBT friendly.

I HAVE NO REGRETS.

The opening blog post we get from Alex’s mother is heart breaking, telling the story of parents and doctors who didn’t know what they were doing and don’t know how to handle this ‘different’ child. It’s pretty clear even from my small amounts of reading on the subject that intersex children are a huge curiosity to doctors. And how hard that curiosity is on the families concerned. Subsequent ones make me want to smack her, which is also accurate in so far as these matters tend to end up, sadly.

I often find, when I read two books with similar themes, that one seems a lot like the other or else falls short in some way. Not so with Alex As Well. There is not a word in here that isn’t original and engaging!