A review by lillimoore
A Year Without a Name: A Memoir by Cyrus Grace Dunham

3.0

I struggled with getting into this book and I think Cyrus Grace Dunham did as well, but it found its footing in the last 30% or so and eventually did provide some really amazing insight into gender dysphoria and FtM transitioning. The beginning of this book just felt so meandering and convoluted and the metaphors throughout felt forced and overdone—honestly, as a reader, if I have to suffer through one more goddamn butterfly metaphor I'm giving up on the hobby altogether. Perhaps the book did this intentionally, because just like its author, it eventually did find itself and come together, but it suffered greatly in getting there. I think it would have been better off as an essay collection with a bit more structure and organization than it had because so often I was confused and I felt like I was blacking out between different stories even though I was fully conscious throughout reading the book. I frequently struggled to understand how one point connected to the next and often felt directionless.

The end of this book and Dunham's description of coming out to his family and getting top surgery were very gratifying and I'm glad I didn't DNF the book early on when I really wanted to because I did enjoy the end enough—not enough to recommend the book, but enough to recommend Dunham's Instagram account (WHEW he's a looker) and to mention that many of the highlights of this book were more succinctly collected and published in the New Yorker, so skip the book and check out the article instead.