How I became a girly girl

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Jen

How I became a girly girl
by Louise Anne Smithson

At the age of eighteen I discover that I have a younger half-brother living nearby who has recently suffered from a family tragedy. Since nobody else seems to want to employ me, I go to look after him for the summer, and discover that he is involved in a journey that will ultimately involve me as well. What starts as a simple baby-sitting job turns into a rediscovery of who we both are.

The story is principally set between May and September 2010, in Woodley, a suburb of Reading in Berkshire and the neighbouring town of Bracknell. However, it also involves visits to Nottingham and Bangkok.

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A recomended read

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This story "How I became a girly girl" is a recomended read for several reasons, thogh with a caveat:

  • The narrator is a rather tomboyish genetic girl.
  • The extreme girly girl is her transitioning half-sibling.
  • The siblings have a mutually benefitial influence on each other, both becoming more naturally feminine. The girly girl tonning down the girlyness and the tomboy girl accepting more girlyness.
  • The narrator meets her half-sibling at the funeral of her estranged biological father.
  • The narrator has to reconcile with the fact that her mother actively discouraged and prevented any and all contact with her bio-father after a messy divorce.
  • Though fiction, the story is set in a very realistic (and real) environment.
  • Together with the requisite trans issues, the story, also very realistically, deals with the issues children (or teens) have to deal with after the divorce of their parents, the unresolved psychological issues of the divorced parent, the loss of parents through (tragic) death, dealing with the estate/will of the deceased parents, and the issues of being an underaged orphan in transition.

Understandibly, some readers might find that personal deamons would make reading about some of these issues to painfull. But Louise Anne Smithson has done a wonderfull job of dealing in a very positive and healing way with these issues. And it might help the reader deal with their own personal past experience, and progress towards healing in their own lives.

I would recommend you reserve a sufficient large block of time when you start reading the novel "How I became a girly girl", since I found it almost impossible to interrupt my reading.

Jessica Nicole

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