General YA Fiction
VG/A Brugman, Alyssa. Alex As Well. Henry Holt and Company, 2015.
214 p. 978-1-62779-014-7. 16.99.
Alex was born with both male and female body parts. Her
parents chose to raise her as a boy, so throughout her childhood she has been
on hormone drugs and has been treated as a boy. As the story opens, the 14-year-old
Alex is five days in to going off of her hormone drugs. Following a brutal
bullying incident in which she was stripped naked and thrown in a river (with the
incident posted on youtube, no less) Alex enrolls herself in a new school
without her parents’ consent. Here she IS a girl from day 1. The most appealing
and humorous aspect of the novel is the internal bickering between “Alex” and “Alex”
– the boy and girl personalities inside her head. At first, treating an
intersex character in this way – essentially as a “multiple personality
disorder” sufferer – seems insulting to people in this situation. Alex is not “sick,”
she is struggling for self-acceptance and to be accepted by her parents.
However, with going on and off hormone therapy at such a young age, and with
Alex being aware of having to “act” in such a way as to be convincing as a boy
at her first school, and then as a girl at the second, Brugman convinces us
that Alex could indeed think of herself as having an unwelcome
observer/commentator (male Alex). Complicating matters even more, Alex quickly
starts falling in love with a girl in her class, and has to deal with a boy
falling for her. The narrative is told from Alex’s point of view, interspersed
with her mother’s confessions to the fictional website motherhoodshared.com.
Brugman’s use of this device helps make the mother a believable character, not
a screaming villain. The ending seems rushed, but this is still definitely
recommended. Philip Levie, YA Librarian, Panorama City Branch Library, LAPL.
