Review: This Is How It Always Is

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this story of Claude and his family coming to terms with the fact that Claude may really be Poppy. I think Frankel, although edges towards sentimentality at times, does a fair job of weighing up the difficulties of raising a transgender child. How, regardless of how loving and accepting you are as parents, the transition from one gender to another is complicated - that the transition may not be linear. The book is another reminder that, given all that Claude/Poppy has to deal with, no one in their right mind would choose to be transgender. This is something you are and have to find your way as best you can.

Importantly, Frankel herself has a transgender daughter. I don't think this type of story should be told unless you have direct experience. Though this book is very much a parent's perspective not that of a transgender child - and Frankel, in her author's note, makes clear that this is not her daughter's story.



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