REVIEW: Gender Theory by Madeline Docherty

You lose your virginity to a boy from your gender theory seminar, and the first person you tell is Ella. Ella's with you at the party when you first kiss a girl. And Ella takes you to the hospital the first time you're diagnosed.

Over the next few years you have a string of relationships and jobs, but you can always count on Ella to be there for you - until the drinking and the parties, the hospital visits and late-night calls, blur the lines of your friendship into something unbalanced and fragile, at risk of breaking altogether.

The worst part is you can see it coming. The worst part is you don't know how to stop.

"You can't fight the feeling that there is something wrong with you, that you are made badly, that you are cold in some rigid, unchangeable way. When you confess these fears to Ella, she tells you that being sick doesn't make you unlovable."

An affecting and delicate story with a hard-hitting concept and beautiful storytelling. From the first few lines, it reads like poetry - soft, descriptive, rich and lyrical but absolutely enchanting in its style and the imagery it creates invokes. Whilst at times these conceptual writing styles can be difficult to digest, especially with a lack of speech marks and running, rambling sentences almost always starting with the same word - I still found it stunning if a little testing in places.

The narration refers to our main character as ‘you’, which at first threw me but slowly became easier to find the flow. Scenes shifted fluidly from one to another instead of a structured narrative; with short chapters that melted into each other in an almost dreamlike state piecing together moments of life, of youth and that in-between state of growing up and growing old. Navigating love, sexuality, friendships, health and identity as our nameless character, us, grows up in front of our eyes - in messy, egotistic, mistake-riddled confused truth that is youth. It carefully dissects the many ways we love, the quiet and the loud, the toxic and the healing in a thoughtful way.

It felt extra personal for me as someone dealing with PCOS to see similar struggles reflected on the pages - a struggle women face every day but are continually gaslit into ignoring despite it infecting every part of their lives. It captures the way chronic illnesses and health problems can take over and how they affect your relationships with others and ourselves.

This was a powerhouse story with an important message - add it to your bookshelves!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Gender Theory will be available from June 6th with John Murray Press.
• Please check content warnings before reading as this title contains sensitive subjects including sex scenes, recreational drugs, alcohol, biphobia, abortion.