cover image Lannie! My Journey from Man to Woman

Lannie! My Journey from Man to Woman

Lannie Rose. SterlingHouse, $18.95 (213pp) ISBN 978-1-58-501109-4

Dear Diary, today I woke up, had lunch with a girlfriend, went shopping, and had sex reassignment surgery. Although you won't find that particular sentence in this male-to-female transsexual memoir, it sums up its tone. Writing in a journal-like style, Rose maps out her “transition” from Eddie to Lannie, but her delivery lacks depth, particularly compared to several penetrating and well-executed transsexual memoirs in recent months. Writing in clipped sentences, Rose more often opts for glibness than for insight. The 42 very short chapters, with titles like “Lannie Gets Her Ears Pierced,” “Two-Hundred-Dollar Jeans” and “Inside the Women's Locker Room,” tend to be focused on the superficial trappings of femininity. Overwhelmed with finally being allowed to play with the “girls,” Lannie is like a child lost in a candy store, except that instead of candy, it's shoes, makeup, clothes and breasts. There are brief moments when she succeeds in letting us into her deeper experiences, but even the chapter called “My Spiritual Journey” doesn't reveal too much. Though she offers a snapshot of one person's joys and journey through an important transition, the result isn't quite poignant enough to be enthralling, nor humorous enough to be sheerly entertaining. (July)