| Choir Boy | |
| Author: | Charlie Jane Anders |
| Published: | April 5, 2005 |
| Publisher: | Soft Skull Press |
| Language: | English |
| Country: | United States |
| Pages: | 320 pp |
| Genre: | Fiction |
Choir Boy is a 2005 novel by Charlie Jane Anders.[1] [2]
Berry, a 12-year-old boy, wants nothing more than to remain a choirboy. Desperate to keep his voice from changing, Berry tries to injure himself, and then convinces a clinic to give him testosterone-inhibiting drugs that keep his voice from deepening but also cause him to grow breasts. Suddenly Berry's thrown into a world of unexpected gender issues that push him into a universe far more complex than anything he's ever known.
Choir Boy won the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature.[3]
Tikkun described it as "engaging", noting its "believable, frustrating quality", and lauded Anders for "handl[ing] issues of gender (and religion, race, and class) with a light touch."[4]
Kirkus Reviews called it "groundbreaking and unflinching", with Berry's story being "memorable", but overall faulted it for a "lack of a cohesive voice and too much figurative language", with "[a]trocious metaphors, sloppy editing and too many pithy observations [that] detract from the prose."[5]