the strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender summary

Yes, that chapter is awful to read, I'm not denying that. The majority of people won't have had experience with being intersex, but the empathy she evokes puts you straight in his shoes. I felt so upset from reading about it, and it made it impossible not to care for Max. However, I do have to give Abigail Tarttelin credit - she writes it in a sensitive and emotional way, and the scene is not included for the shock value. I had to put the book down after reading it and have a break, because I was just utterly devastated. It's harrowing and very distressing, and I don't often get as emotional as I did. If you're sensitive to scenes of rape and find it triggering or upsetting, I'd sincerely suggest you skip the first chapter of the book told from Max's perspective.

He blames himself for being intersex, wondering if he's always going to be a curiosity that people feel it's their right to explore. Because Max identifies as male and is heterosexual, he's never done anything sexual with a man before: he's terrified, in pain and utterly ashamed by what happens. In the week before Max's sixteenth birthday, Hunter comes in to his room and - as I'm sure you can guess by the quote at the top of this review - he sexually assaults him. Hunter and Max have been best friends since they were born - Hunter being only a few months older than Max - and he's always trusted him with his secret. The only people that know about Max are his parents, their best friends Leah and Edward and their son Hunter. Max has a female reproductive system but identifies as male - he doesn't have breasts, and he experienced a course of testosterone shots in his early teens. Being intersex means being born with a reproductive system, chromosomes or genitalia that fall somewhere between the binary of male and female, effectively making you both male and female, but also neither male nor female. There's no doubt that Max is one of the most popular kids in school: every guy wants to be him, and every girl wants to be with him.īut Max has a secret - he's intersex. He lives comfortably as part of a white upper-middle class family in a suburb of Oxford, with his little brother Daniel, Karen, his mother and a high-flying barrister, and his Crown prosecutor father, Steve. So I've been thinking so far, This isn't happening.' More to the point, this happens to girls. This happens to people in dark alleyways, at night, with strangers. Not with your best, true, forever friend when you were a kid. Not with the son of your parents' best friends.

They happen to other people, but not to you, not to me. *This review will contain spoilers!* 'Things like this never happen.

The strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender summary