It's a boy! It's a girl! It's...
Kathleen Winter has always been fascinated by the riddle of gender, so it's perfectly natural that she chose a hermaphrodite as the hero/ine of her first novel
Reviewed by Christine Fischer Guy
Globe and Mail Update Published on Friday, Jun. 25, 2010 12:08PM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/review-annabel-by-kathleen-winter/article1617909/It's fair to say the riddle of gender has engaged Kathleen Winter for some time now. Her 2007 collection of short stories, boYs, limned the daily disconnections between the sexes, major and minor, that keep us from fully comprehending one another. So the fact that she chose a hermaphrodite as the main character for her first novel represents a natural progression: The baby is a literal union of the sexes.
For the first few days of their baby's life, Jacinta and Treadway do not discuss the fact of its ambiguous gender. When it does finally come up, Treadway's is a rational and logical response, built on his instinct to protect his child.
