Reviews with content warning for Suicide - The Appointment: A Novel

The Appointment is a monologue, mostly a darkly comical meditation on sexuality. The unnamed narrator, a trans man, tells his story to Dr. Seligman, a plastic surgeon who will be performing his gender reassignment surgery. When his workplace mandated that he see a therapist after threatening to staple a coworker to death, the narrator made up wild stories of sexual fantasies about Hitler as a kind of rebellion and way to make his counselor uncomfortable.

To Dr. Seligman he relays this, explains an obsession with sex dolls, describes a relationship with a man known to the reader only as “K,” and details his experience growing up in Germany labeled as a girl and how this never felt right. His description of the female body as someone who never wanted to be female is quite gripping.

I found the focalizing of Jewishness in this book to be a little muddled— why is it focalized exactly?— and disturbing, but I suppose that was the point (the other title of this book is, after all, The Story of a Jewish Cock). Overall, an interesting commentary on sex and gender in society.

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annanahnah's review

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dark funny mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

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scherezade's review

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

WOW this was quite a read. I went into the book cold and when it opened with that

incredibly graphic Hitler-themed sexual fantasy

I very nearly stopped listening, but I kept going. This novel definitely goes to uncomfortable, weird and dark places, but it has a lot of interesting and often moving things to say about gender, sexuality, national identity, the self, and a combination of all of those things. The prose is also by turn really beautiful and really funny; in both instances, I had to pause the audiobook to think about what I'd just read (or laugh out loud). The author narrates the audiobook as well, which made for a uniquely engaging experience given her dry, soft voice, and I thought was well suited to how the book is written stylistically like a monologue.

Not something I'd recommend to everyone, but deeply original and definitely memorable. I'm glad to have read it.

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