Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Confessions of the Fox: A Novel

I read this for one of my classes to write my final paper, analyzing how it is a retelling of historical 18th century documents. I think it's going to be difficult.

I wanted to like this book so, so badly. It's a trans historical fiction, it's supposed to be in the style of Pale Fire, it's funny and academic, but none of these really worked in the text and, as such, didn't work for me. The main thing is that this book doesn't use theory as a way to drive a story, but a story as a way to explain theory. This could work, if the story was tight enough and enjoyable so the reader could really appreciate the theory. This is not that story — both of the stories were all over the place, and I never felt like any of the characters were very fleshed out. Jack is a trans swindler who loves having sex with childhood trauma — but what is he like? Is he funny or suave; is he challenged in any way with his worldview? Not really. Neither are any of the side characters. I wanted to like Bess so much, but she also had little outside of her backstory and relationship to Jack: no personality or character. I saw a reviewer say that the characters in this are more dolls to move around so that the plot can progress forward and then the theoretical discussions can continue, and I agree with that.

Also, the end of Dr. Voth's arc, in which he goes off into a parallel timeline-type world and is living amongst aliens is CRAZY. What are we doing here. I think just leaving him to deal with his own downward spiral and beginning to understand the collaboration of the manuscript could've been really interesting, but this "plot twist" is so strange that it threw me off immensely.

This book is also just very, very sexual. I'll admit I'm somewhat of a prude, but mentioning how good you are at having sex and how much you want to have sex every other page (not an exaggeration) is such a bore and an annoyance. The way that both Jack and Dr. Voth talked about women headed into the misogynistic, objectifying zone, and although I certainly don't think they needed anyone to finger-wag and say "This isn't good!! You need to stop this!" having both of your main characters approach women the same way without their views ever fluctuating is pretty grating.

There's also certainly something to be said about how every character of color exists only to support Jack and risk their lives for him, without any seeming reason. I think it's good that they didn't have any "oh the white character is learning to not be racist anymore :) isn't he great?" parts, but in refusing to flesh out the characters and give them personalities and deep backstories (aside from Bess), the book is still tokenizing them to an extent, at least in my opinion.

Oh, by the way — if you're squeamish around urine, do not read this book. There's a lot of discussion of urine, both sexual and medicinal.

I saw a lot of complaints about

the top surgery scene, which I do admit seems to go into the "only there to support the white protagonist" trope for Bess, but I also thought the hand-waving after was absolutely so absurd, it was hilarious. Guy is randomly like "yeah I can give you an 18th century mastectomy in this brothel," faints, and the other guy's girlfriend does it perfectly and just by reading the manual. And then he jumps up and smothers the first guy with his bleeding chest !!! WHAT!!!!!! And then he's running around perfectly fine three weeks later. I want to study this book (and I am, but unfortunately not as critically as I would like).

ALSO the end! It's a cop-out! I know that's to be expected, but I didn't care enough about the characters to groan when I read it, instead of feeling relieved.

I know throughout I kept referring to other reviews, but I basically had to make sure I wasn't the only one who was being driven absolutely crazy by this book. I think its publicity coasted a lot on "trans historical fiction! Academia and theory!" but it doesn't have much else (nor is the theory done well enough to feel like it's not a hobbling-together of different ideas).

Content Warnings

opossumble's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

cosypuck's review against another edition

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4.5

I much preferred the narrative about Jack & Bess to the footnote narrative about Dr Voth, but the latter didn't spoil the book for me and in some places did add to it. I didn't like that

the collective group of queer editors

wasn't expanded on - for the sake of how much it was touched on it could have been left out, for me.

Content Warnings

slinkmalink's review against another edition

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emotional informative mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

I'm not sure exactly what I expected from this book and I remain unsure exactly how to categorise it? as it is very different from anything else I've read even in format which was a very cool way to write it I thought, and tho took a little bit of time to get to the mystery bit I was fully absorbed when it did
Vaguely knew about Wild (from horrible histories ofc) but I hadn't heard of jack Sheppard at all n I thought they conveyed a really vivid picture of crime/prison system in that era that was v interesting
Also a very different perspective on gender than u usually get which was interesting

Content Warnings

quinnyquinnquinn's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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