Choir Boy
Lots of people sing. Only a few are choirboys," says Berry Sanchez, the titular choirboy of Charlie Anders' first novel. He's a little discouraged, but for the moment, things aren't so bad. His voice-of-an-angel shows no sign of cracking; his father hasn't yet downgraded from deficient to deranged, and his mother is blessedly absent; he's healing up nicely from his self-inflicted shot at castrato; and his budding breasts haven't started to show.
Berry wants nothing so dearly as to stay a choirboy forever. After his run-in with the bread knife, he meets tranny Maura in his new psychiatrist's waiting room. On her advice, he marches off to a clinic for hormones-eureka, a perfect fix for imminent voice change!-after about 34 seconds of thought.
For 13 chapters, the line between comedy and are-you-fucking-kidding-me is as taut as it is baffling. No one questions Berry's deeper motivations for so desperately wanting to remain a choirboy until late in the novel. The adults lack depth, existing on a fringe of farce. But Choir Boy is more about the kids: popular Lisa, who was tortured for years by her fundamentalist father, and Wilson, who, after perpetrating his share of Berry-bashing, gets spotted at a local LGBT youth support group. Anders pulls through with enough complexity (read: pain, confusion and poundings) to demonstrate that she intends the lightness to mirror Berry's child-stubborn, hands-over-ears will to keep it simple.
For the average person, straight or queer, the concept of trans can be a headache-inducing minefield of opportunities to misunderstand, insult and piss off. Berry's struggle to understand his changing body and what he wants from it, much less explain it to his friends and family, exemplifies this: His shift provokes hysteria in his father, mother, friends, friends' parents, the choir and the community at large; most everyone deals with the uncertainty either through violence or by trying to force him one way or the other. Lisa wants him to be her new best gal pal. His father grows enraged, insisting Berry is his son, and attempts to kidnap him. Maura wants a protégé. His mother insists Berry is becoming a girl, and accuses him of trying to ruin her life when he says he's just not sure what he is. And on and on.
"Berry didn't understand why he had to become so many fraudulent things just to stay one true thing a little longer." At 13, it's surprising that Berry can even find solace in choir. Take away the spironolactone, and this is a coming-of-age tale with universal resonance that also manages to expand our understanding of the word "universal."