But basically I thought Misfortune was a fantastic ride. Like Austen? Dickens? Shakespeare? Classics? Rethinking the role of nature and nurture in the development of human sexuality in a very 21st-century way? Well then, maybe it is for you, after all!The title character is sometimes called Miss Fortune by the villagers, having survived a botched late-term abortion and been abandoned on a garbage heap, then found and adopted by the richest man in England in 1820. The hitch? Miss Fortune is a boy, but her eccentric adoptive father so wants a daughter to replace his beloved late sister that he rears his beloved child as Rose, a girl. In this he has the complicity of his wife, a scholar fascinated with ideas of dual-genderism and socially constructed sexuality. (Their marriage begins for convenience and remains sexless, though it grows loving.) Adolescence "outs" Rose, who must then confront an internal masculinity and balance it with the femininity he was brought up to show.
Occasionally graphic, slightly disturbing, sexy, complex, clever and thought-provoking. I dare you!
(Maybe another time we can talk about why I will not watch R-rated movies but have no problem with a book like this. Hm. If you all can help me figure that out I will be indebted to you!)
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