The Danish Girl
Book - 2000
Set against the glitz and decadence of 1920s Copenhagen, Dresden, and Paris, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the intimacy that defines a marriage and the nearly forgotten story of the love between a man who discovers that he is, in fact, a woman and the woman who would sacrifice anything for him. Uniting fact and fiction into a unique romantic vision. The Danish Girl explores the wry heart of what connects men and women -- and what separates them. But this book, like Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, transcends the confines of sex and gender and historical place. Ultimately, The Danish Girls lush prose and generous emotional insight make it, after the last page is turned, a love story that no reader will soon forget. With The Danish Girl. David Ebershoff will make one of the year's dazzling lit
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Add a CommentSet during the 1930s, this is an elegantly written tale about a romantic marriage between a woman and a trans-gendered woman. Very loosely based on a true story, Ebershoff's tragic characters are both vivid and realistic. I also enjoyed the many clever details about the chic western European setting.
A well-written fictionalization of an interesting person in a different time. I admired the strength of the relationships between the characters, and wanted all of them to achieve what they desired. Suspenseful and intimate.
Some of the strongest and most compassionate characters in literary history. Greta became my hero and I wanted Lili to get her heart's desire so badly!
I got confused if the man or the women were speaking the transition was weird
This is a fantastic novel--beautifully written historical fiction that creates a very strong sense of place and time and explores two very distinctive characters and the subtle shifts of power within their relationship. The sentences are gorgeous, but not distracting, and I raced through the novel wanting to see how the character would grow and change. Ebershoff also manages the difficult job of plausibly imagining how two people from a very different time might have thought about being intersex and transgender at a time when their was no public conversation about those ways of being.
My only caveat: the novel is so much of its era it wouldn't be useful for readers who don't know anything about intersex & trans people and are looking for an introduction to those experiences; Lili's analogs today live in a vastly different world that understands and misunderstands them differently. But I can't fault a novel for serving its characters instead of public education.
Hmmm The audio reader isn't the best & the first chapter just put me off. Boring conversations between man/wife. Not a recommend unless you want some fairly explicit explanation of acts I'd rather not hear about.
This book reads more like a travelogue than a novel. The sentences are overly long, often wandering off topic. It totally misrepresents the actual relationship between the couple.
An unusual story, beautifully written.