My Life as a Boy: A Woman's Story - Hardcover

Chernin, Kim

3.39

76 ratings by Goodreads

9781565121638: My Life as a Boy: A Woman's Story

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565121635 ISBN 13: 9781565121638

Publisher: Algonquin Books, 1997

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

By turns provocative and startlingly revealing, MY LIFE AS A BOY is the story of a woman trying to figure out what love is, trying to understand what happens between desire and the determination to possess the object of that desire, and discovering what it's like to go after what you want. "Chernin writes with the grace of a poet and the insight of a psychotherapist, bringing the shape-shifting nature of intimate relationship alive."--San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Although touted as a reflection on gender and sex roles, My Life As a Boy is a classic romance--a memoir of Kim Chernin's star-crossed love affair with the bewitching Hadamar, which began as a friendship in Berkeley in the late 1970s, when both women were on the verge of leaving their husbands and changing their lives. For Hadamar, who had "never made an unconventional decision in her whole life," the erotic subtext of their romantic dinners out and talks until dawn was satisfaction enough. But Chernin was developing a new boyish persona that needed to push forward, to pursue, to possess. Even her looks began to change, and she found a slender, assertive self emerging, ready to scale the garden wall and climb a ladder into her beloved's window. Hadamar's eventual betrayal of Chernin comes as no surprise to the reader, nor does Chernin's admission that Hadamar was not the love of her life. After her first despairing days alone, Chernin begins to sense "in the inexorable thrust" of her own development "the promise of power, liberation, license, opportunity"--the stirrings of her new response to women, and the potential it holds. A strange, dreamy memoir that reads like a novella of fated love. --Regina Marler

From the Back Cover:

It all began when Chernin's daughter had gone off to college; her marriage was wobbly, and the passion she had always longed for eluded her. She was restless, and when she thought about her life, she thought she wanted something else. She didn't know then that Hadamar, a beautiful, charismatic woman, would inspire her to ditch her female ways. Before long, she finds herself taking on characteristics that can only be described as like those of a boy. She becomes daring and impetuous - reckless, even. And she falls in love. This time around, though, she doesn't surrender to passion; she pursues it - as a boy would. There's one small catch; Hadamar has her own secret. In a dramatic denouement, Chernin learns a lesson in love and discovers the risks of becoming a boy. By turns provocative and insightful, My Life as a Boy is a story of a woman pursuing what she wants without hesitation, trying to understand what happens between the first stirrings of desire and the determination to possess the object of that desire. In this work of nonfiction that unfolds as dramatically as a novel, Chernin charges right into the center of a taboo to reveal what it's like for a woman to discover another part of her nature.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.