Parrotfish

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of her junior year in high school, Angela McNair made some changes. Not just her hairstyle. Not just the sort of clothes she wore. Not just the people she hung around with. And not just her name. Nope, Angie changed way more than that. She changed her outside to match her inside: she changed her sexual identity. Sort of like the parrot fish.

Parrotfish, by Christine Wittlinger, has been on the shelf since last September. Well, not really on the shelf very much; it’s the number one most-taken-out new novel of the 2007/2008 school year -- beating out Bloodline, Life As We Knew It, and The Secret Hour by just 1 circulation. In a story all about family, and self, and coming of age, Wittlinger takes us on a rare journey through the early experiences of a female to male transsexual teen.

Angie tells her family first. Her Dad, with whom she has always done lots of guy stuff, is pretty zen. Her sister, Laurie, is mad and mortified. Her brother, Charlie, hardly looks up from his video games. Her Mom is absolutely stunned, and can’t even really look Angie in the eye. Angela, daughter and sister, is now Grady, son and brother.

When Grady goes back to school after Thanksgiving, he finds out pretty quickly that his spot in the pecking order has changed. He encounters equal opportunity harassment, from male and female alike. Some of his teachers can deal, and some cannot. People he never knew very well treat him better than most of his old friends. “ ‘Angela was my friend, but I don’t know who Grady is! I’m sorry, but I can’t call you that in front of people. I can’t be a part of this whole thing. It’s just too bizarre.’ "

In this novel, we spend a month in Grady’s head, silent observers as he grapples with the realities of his identity change. There are bad times, but nothing unspeakable. There are good times, but nothing ecstatic. There are a lot of uncomfortable, in the middle times. And there are the no-longer-mundane details associated with living a male life in a female body: where to go to the bathroom, changing before and after gym class, etc. Not to mention the complications of falling in love. And parts of Parrotfish are pretty funny. The wildly excessive Christmas prep at the McNair household and Grady’s wry inner monologs (“Does a Hamlet fish carry around a skull and ponder suicide?”) come to mind.

If you haven’t read Parrotfish, I have carefully not told you how everything comes out. If you have, why not take a minute to comment and tell us what you thought of it?