This sympathetic novel about the effect of a sex change on a romantic relationship, a family, and a community could almost be sold as a textbook--a kind of transgender Guide to the Perplexed. With its calming tone and scrupulous sensitivity to the feelings of all involved, it sometimes reads like a textbook, too. But while nobody is likely to launch a protest campaign over the cautious revelations of Trans-sister Radio, that's precisely the subject of Chris Bohjalian's seventh novel, in which a male college professor in a small Vermont town transforms himself into a woman. Even Dana Stevens's initial step in this direction--donning women's clothing--elicits a powerful reaction from the community.

And what about Dana's new girlfriend Allie Banks, a beloved local schoolteacher who fell in love with him before learning of his plan? Her initial instinct is to end the relationship. Then she decides to stand by Dana, inspired rather than daunted by her stuffy ex-husband Will's opposition to the "effeminate" guy she's dating, and by the horrified reactions of the parents at her school. She does, it's true, continue to love Dana after the sex reassignment surgery. And she stoically endures the threatening notes in her school mailbox and the crude graffiti on her front door, as well as the minor vindication of a local public radio story on their battle. Yet Allie never makes the emotional shift from heterosexual woman to lesbian. Breaking off the affair, she spends months mourning the man she had fallen in love with.

Assuming, as we are meant to, that Dana is outwardly becoming the person she always was inside--that biology is anything but destiny--there's only one character who undergoes a profound change over the course of the novel. That would be Will, Allie's ex-husband, who recoils from Dana's initial sexual ambiguity. After her surgery, however, he finds himself increasingly aware of her as a woman. And so when I'd hug Dana or touch the inside of her palm with the inside of mine (a handshake, yet so suggestive) or my fingers would find their way to one of her arms, I would experience a sexual ripple and wonder why I had felt such a thing--why I had courted such a thing. And the answer would be because she was pretty and she was smart and she was feminine.

Structuring his story around the transcript of a fictional National Public Radio feature on transgender, Bohjalian shifts the point of view with every chapter: the characters often seem to be enlarging on comments they had made for broadcast. We hear from Dana, Allie, and Will in turn, as well as Carly, the daughter of the divorced couple. In this sense, Trans-sister Radio gives everyone equal time. And for good or ill, it has none of the bluster or transgressive charge of Gore Vidal's late-1960s bombshell, Myra Breckinridge. Instead it brings transgender home, rendering it (to quote Dana herself) "domestic as a balloon shade or a perennial garden. And just as harmless." --Regina Marler


From Publishers Weekly
The bestselling author of Midwives and The Law of Similars continues his tradition of incorporating social issues into his moving narratives. Transsexuality goes mainstream in this Scarlet Letter for a softer, gentler but more complicated age. Allison Banks--42 years old, heterosexual, long divorced, mother of a college student and a grade school teacher in a picturesque Vermont village--meets single, attractive, attentive, 35-year-old Dana Stevens when she takes his film class at a nearby college. Early on in the relationship, Dana confesses that he has always believed he was female, though he desires women, too--and he is soon to undergo a long-planned sex change operation. Despite this revelation, and despite her reservations, Allison invites Dana to move in with her, and they have great sex right up until the night before the operation in Colorado, where Allison has loyally accompanied Dana for post-op and moral support. On their return to Vermont, he--now physically and emphatically "she"--continues to share Allison's bed and her house, though nothing can be the same as it was. Allison's ex-husband, Vermont Public Radio president Will, now her good friend, and their daughter, Carly, cope well with the situation, but the close-knit community is less understanding. Questions of what constitutes community tolerance are explored here, but the novel's central focus is on the definition of sex and gender in the characters' personal lives. Allison, Dana, Carly and Will express their views in alternating first person chapters, and transcripts from a fictional NPR All Things Considered series on Dana and her operation provide additional narrative background. Gender is central to who we are, Bohjalian concludes, but not perhaps to who we love. Sex, on the other hand, expresses who we are. Bohjalian's sometimes simplistic characterizations diminish the emotional impact of the novel, and his abundant research on gender dysfunction often gives the book a curiously flat, documentary quality. Nevertheless, Bohjalian humanizes the transsexual community and explains the complexities of sex and gender in an accessible, evenhanded fashion, making a valuable contribution to a dialogue of social and political import. 50,000 first printing; NPR sponsorship; cross-promotion with Vintage publication of The Law of Similars; 15-city author tour. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
A compelling and often disturbing novel, Trans-sister Radio challenges all of our assumptions about gender, relationships, and sexuality. A powerful secret literally transforms four lives: Allison Banks, a sixth grade teacher; Will, her ex-husband and president of a local Vermont Public Radio station; their teenage daughter Carly; and Dana Stevens, a college instructor who falls in love with Allison. The structure of the book is essential for understanding the (r)evolution of emotions that occur with the complex issues Bohjalian explores through private lives made very public. The four voices, performed by Kymberli Colbourne, alternate to reveal their own separate struggles and to create a metamorphosis that is central to the story. A demanding work that is often graphic, always gentle, and full of wisdom and surprising humor. Recommended for adult audiences. Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Books can make you think, challenge convention, or reconsider preconceptions. Chris Bohjalian's novel tells of Allison Banks, a teacher who dates Dana Stevens, a professor teaching a night course she takes. After Dana and Allison fall in love, Dana reveals that he will undergo a sex change and asks Allison to remain his lover after surgery. Kymberli Colbourne's superb reading begins with the romance and continues through surgery to the controversy that erupts in the Vermont town. Colbourne reads each character's "transcripts" from an NPR series created by Allison's ex-husband, with verve, adding dramatically to the presentation. Colbourne's subtle, effective mix of inflection sets a pace that never falters in a book that defies stereotypes. D.J.S. Winner of AUDIOFILE Earphones Award. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
What is the relationship between gender and sexuality? How do your feelings about yourself as a man or woman affect your sexual preferences? How important are your genitalia to your self-image? Bohjalian explores these questions with honesty and compassion. Allison, an elementary-school teacher, takes a film class and falls in love with Dana, her professor. Dana feels the same way about Allison--but when he reveals his plans to undergo a sex change operation, Allison is tormented with questions. She loves Dana as a man--what if she isn't attracted to Dana as a woman? Why should Dana's gender matter if Allison loves the person inside the body? Once word gets out, outraged parents complain that Allison's relationship with Dana is a moral danger to the children she teaches, so that Allison risks losing not only Dana, but her job as well. Provocative and insightful, this gender-bending novel will make readers question what it means to be a man or a woman, and how strongly these identities are influenced by biological and cultural pressures. Bonnie Johnston


Review
“Inspired…. [a] highly original novel…. Impossible to put down.”–USA Today

“Trans-Sister Radio…bears Bohjalian’s hallmark: ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity…. Speaks directly to the heart.”–San Francisco Chronicle

“Bohjalian has…written an interesting [and] ultimately, a quite daring novel, and a worthy successor to Midwives. Like that novel, Trans-Sister Radio challenges readers’ most dearly held notions of biological reality.”–Philadelphia Inquirer

“An insightful look at love and sexuality…with great compassion and insight.”–Los Angeles Times

“A though-provoking tale with a rich, varied texture…. [An] addictive read.”–The Denver Post


Review
?Inspired?. [a] highly original novel?. Impossible to put down.??USA Today

?Trans-Sister Radio?bears Bohjalian?s hallmark: ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity?. Speaks directly to the heart.??San Francisco Chronicle

?Bohjalian has?written an interesting [and] ultimately, a quite daring novel, and a worthy successor to Midwives. Like that novel, Trans-Sister Radio challenges readers? most dearly held notions of biological reality.??Philadelphia Inquirer

?An insightful look at love and sexuality?with great compassion and insight.??Los Angeles Times

?A though-provoking tale with a rich, varied texture?. [An] addictive read.??The Denver Post


Book Description
With Trans-Sister Radio, Chris Bohjalian, author of the bestseller Midwives, again confronts his very human characters with issues larger than themselves, here tackling the explosive issue of gender.

When Allison Banks develops a crush on Dana Stevens, she knows that he will give her what she needs most: attention, gentleness, kindness, passion. Her daughter, Carly, enthusiastically witnesses the change in her mother. But then a few months into their relationship, Dana tells Allison his secret: he has always been certain that he is a woman born into the wrong skin, and soon he will have a sex-change operation. Allison, overwhelmed by the depth of her passion, and finds herself unable to leave Dana. By deciding to stay, she finds she must confront questions most people never even consider. Not only will her own life and Carly’s be irrevocably changed, she will have to contend with the outrage of a small Vermont community and come to terms with her lover’s new body–hoping against hope that her love will transcend the physical.


Download Description
Four people in a small Vermont village are about to have their lives inexorably intertwined by the uncertainties of love . . . and the apparent absolutes of gender.


From the Inside Flap
With Trans-Sister Radio, Chris Bohjalian, author of the bestseller Midwives, again confronts his very human characters with issues larger than themselves, here tackling the explosive issue of gender.

When Allison Banks develops a crush on Dana Stevens, she knows that he will give her what she needs most: attention, gentleness, kindness, passion. Her daughter, Carly, enthusiastically witnesses the change in her mother. But then a few months into their relationship, Dana tells Allison his secret: he has always been certain that he is a woman born into the wrong skin, and soon he will have a sex-change operation. Allison, overwhelmed by the depth of her passion, and finds herself unable to leave Dana. By deciding to stay, she finds she must confront questions most people never even consider. Not only will her own life and Carly’s be irrevocably changed, she will have to contend with the outrage of a small Vermont community and come to terms with her lover’s new body–hoping against hope that her love will transcend the physical.


From the Back Cover
“Inspired…. [a] highly original novel…. Impossible to put down.”–USA Today

“Trans-Sister Radio…bears Bohjalian’s hallmark: ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity…. Speaks directly to the heart.”–San Francisco Chronicle

“Bohjalian has…written an interesting [and] ultimately, a quite daring novel, and a worthy successor to Midwives. Like that novel, Trans-Sister Radio challenges readers’ most dearly held notions of biological reality.”–Philadelphia Inquirer

“An insightful look at love and sexuality…with great compassion and insight.”–Los Angeles Times

“A though-provoking tale with a rich, varied texture…. [An] addictive read.”–The Denver Post


About the Author
Chris Bohjalian is the author of eight novels, including Midwives, (a # 1 New York Times bestseller and an Oprah’s Book Club® selection), Trans-Sister Radio, and The Buffalo Soldier—as well as Idyll Banter, a collection of magazine essays and newspaper columns.

His work has been translated into seventeen languages, been published in twenty countries, and twice become acclaimed movies, (“Midwives” and “Past the Bleachers”).  In 2002 and he won the New England Book Award.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Carly
I was eight when my parents separated, and nine when they actually divorced. That means that for a little more than a decade, I've watched my mom get ready for dates. Sometimes, until I started ninth grade, I'd even keep her company on Saturday afternoons, while she'd take these long, luxurious bubble baths. I'd put the lid down on the toilet and sit there, and we'd talk about school or boys or the guy she was dating.

I stopped joining her in the bathroom in ninth grade for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it had started to seem a little weird to me to be hanging out with her when I was fourteen and she was naked.

But she has always been pretty cool about bodies and sex, and for all I know, she wouldn't mind my joining her in the bathroom even now when I'm home from college. For better or worse--and usually for better--my mom has always been very comfortable with subjects that give most parents the shivers. A couple of days before my fifteenth birthday, she took me to the gynecologist to get me fitted for a diaphragm, and told me where in her bedroom she kept the spermicidally lubricated condoms. (Of course, I already knew: God, by then I even knew where she'd hidden a vibrator.)

I hadn't had sex yet, and my mom made it clear that she didn't want me to in the foreseeable future. But she had a pretty good memory of the hormonal chaos that hits a person in high school, and she wanted to do all that she could for my sake to ensure that she wouldn't become a grandmother any sooner than necessary.

When I think back on it, my parents' divorce was very civilized. At least it has always seemed that way to me, though it's clear there are things I don't know.

The way my mom tells it, I was in second or third grade when they realized they just didn't love each other anymore the way they had when they were first married. They'd worked together at the radio station then, and they'd shared everything. My mom insists they both came to the realization at about the same time that they should separate: My mom was thirty-two and my dad was thirty-three, and they figured they were still young enough to hook up with someone who, in the long years ahead, could keep their motors humming the way they were meant to.

Sometimes my dad hints that it wasn't quite so mutual. Most of the time he toes their party line, but every so often I'll get the impression that when he moved out, he was figuring they'd both change their minds and reconcile in a couple of weeks. I think he might have thought he was just being cool.

Once when he was visiting my mom, I overheard him telling her that he knew her heart had never been into the counseling they went through when I was eight.

Still, he was the one who got remarried.

Sometimes, when I was little, I'd help my mom pick out her jewelry or clothing for a date.

"Wear the pearls," I might suggest.

"It's a clambake," she'd remind me.

"Too formal?"

"And they might scare the oysters."

One time she especially indulged me. I was eleven years old and convinced there was no fashion statement more powerful than a kilt. And so she wore a red-and-green Christmas kilt to a backyard cookout, even though it was the middle of August and the air was just plain sticky. That night my baby-sitter spent most of the time standing in front of a fan, with her T-shirt rolled up like a halter.

If I were to count, I'd guess my mom probably had five serious boyfriends in the decade between my parents' divorce and the day she met Dana. Dana had been in pre-surgical therapy for two years by then and had probably endured close to fifty hours of electrolysis. He'd been on hormone therapy for a good four or five months.

Unlike a lot of pre-op M2Fs, he wasn't trying to pass as a woman yet, he hadn't begun his transition.

Of course, he didn't tell my mom any of this--not that he should have. When they met, he was simply the professor for a film course at the university that she was taking that summer as a lark, and she was one of his students.

What was he supposed to do, say to the class, "Hi, I'm Dana, and I've spent a good part of the last year with my upper lip deadened by Novacaine"?

Or, "Good evening, I'm your professor. I'm about to start developing breasts!"

Or, if he wanted, for some reason, to be completely candid, "You folks ever met a lesbian with a penis? Have now!"

He had no idea he was going to fall in love with my mom, even when they started to date, and she had no idea she was going to fall in love with him. It just happened.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Four people in a small Vermont village are about to have their lives inexorably intertwined by the uncertainties of love . . . and the apparent absolutes of gender.        

Schoolteacher Allison Banks, the long-divorced mother of a teenager on the cusp of college, has at last fallen in love. The object of her desire? Dana Stevens, a professor at the nearby university and her instructor for a summer film and literature course. Her daughter, Carly, watches with pleasure her mother's newfound happiness, but her ex-husband, Will, the president of Vermont Public Radio, is jealous. Still secretly in love with his ex-wife, he finds himself increasingly unsettled by the prospect of Allison's attachment to another man.

Yet Dana is unlike anyone Allison has ever been with: attentive, gentle, kind — and an exceptionally ardent lover. Moreover, it's clear that Dana cares just as deeply for Allison. The only stumbling block? Dana has known always that in actuality he is a woman — genitalia, plumbing, and perceptions be damned — and he will soon be having a sex change operation.

At first Allison runs, but overwhelmed by the depth of her passions, she returns. But can the pair's love transcend both the biologic imperatives that are their bodies, as well as their ingrained notions of sexual preference? Moreover, can their love survive the outrage of the small community in which they live?

All four characters — Allison, Dana, Carly, and Will — narrate this compelling story, spinning a tale that will keep you turning the pages with the eagerness we usually reserve for thrillers, while nodding in wonderat such a deeply moving and profoundly honest portrayal of longing, love, and desire.

SYNOPSIS

With Trans-Sister Radio, Chris Bohjalian, author of the bestseller Midwives, again confronts his very human characters with issues larger than themselves, here tackling the explosive issue of gender.

FROM THE CRITICS

Carol Memmott - USA Today

Trans-Sister Radio is a controversial, highly original novel about a lot more than gender issues and sexual orientation. It is about the precarious dance on the checkerboard of sex. It is about life choices, lifestyle, tolerance and intolerance, and, above all, a commitment to love. Some might consider the resolution an equivocation, but this book is impossible to put down.

San Francisco Chronicle

In the convolutions of human frailties and the confounding enigma of love, [Bohjalian's] tale brings to bear issues that transcend the bounds of gender: image, loneliness, yearning, and, most of all, the human capacity for change. . .It bears his hallmark: ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity. He accomplishes this in plaintive prose that speaks directly to the heart.

Nancy E. Young - BUST Magazine

Set your dial to Trans-Sister Radio for a thoughtful and provocative read, and when you want more after you finish, tune into Bohjalian's earlier books, which are as wel written.

Library Journal

A compelling and often disturbing novel, Trans-sister Radio challenges all of our assumptions about gender, relationships, and sexuality. A powerful secret literally transforms four lives: Allison Banks, a sixth grade teacher; Will, her ex-husband and president of a local Vermont Public Radio station; their teenage daughter Carly; and Dana Stevens, a college instructor who falls in love with Allison. The structure of the book is essential for understanding the (r)evolution of emotions that occur with the complex issues Bohjalian explores through private lives made very public. The four voices, performed by Kymberli Colbourne, alternate to reveal their own separate struggles and to create a metamorphosis that is central to the story. A demanding work that is often graphic, always gentle, and full of wisdom and surprising humor. Recommended for adult audiences. Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile