The New Woman: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick 2015
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By Charity Norman
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2 reviews
A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick 2015
‘A poignant tale of one person’s transgender journey.’ – Heat
Luke Livingstone is a lucky man. He’s a respected solicitor, a father and grandfather, a pillar of the community. He has a loving wife and an idyllic home in the Oxfordshire countryside. Yet Luke is struggling with an unbearable secret, and it’s threatening to destroy him.
All his life, Luke has hidden the truth about himself and his identity. It’s a truth so fundamental that it will shatter his family, rock his community and leave him outcast. But Luke has nowhere left to run, and to continue living, he must become the person – the woman – he knows himself to be, whatever the cost.‘Move over Jodi Picoult. New Zealand-based author Charity Norman has the same clever knack of taking an issue and examining it from all angles, to see the effect it has on everyone involved.’ New Zealand Herald
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This book really opened a subject that many of us hadn't considered. It was a page turner full of emotion as Luke changes and becomes his true self.
I really enjoyed getting to know Luke and missed him when I had finished the book. To me he had become a very real person.
Well worth a read
This book is wonderful. The characters are brilliant and the author reveals them to you perfectly. But this book is not just a good read, or a great read. It is an important book, because it really taught me to think again about this subject. Better still, it made me see how narrow minded I was before I read it. I am ashamed to say that I used to think being transgender was a choice. This novel showed me the battles, internal and external that Lucia faced. I believe one day we will have the same accepting attitude regarding transgendered people that we have regarding sexuality. I just hope it doesn't take us too long, but thankfully novels like this one can only hasten the process.
I should add that I received a publishers copy of this novel in a competition, the best prize I've ever won.
