Disappoint Me
Books | Fiction / Literary
Nicola Dinan
“One of the sharpest and most emotionally vulnerable novels on the complicated dynamic of dating cisgender straight men as a trans woman.”—Autostraddle (7 New Trans Novels to Read this Summer)“Dinan writes like some kind of demigod. Her fictions make thinkable new realities for how we live and what we might expect from each other.”—Torrey Peters, bestselling author of Detransition, BabyONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR (SO FAR): Elle, Vogue, BookRiotYou can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can’t deny the bones their flesh. A person is no fewer than two things.Thirty years old with a lifetime of dysphoria and irritating exes rattling around in her head, Max is plagued by a deep dissatisfaction. Shouldn't these be the best years of her life? Why doesn't it feel that way? After taking a spill down the stairs at a New Year’s Eve party, she decides to make some changes. First: a stab at good old-fashioned heteronormativity.Max thinks she’s found the answer in Vincent. While his corporate colleagues, trad friends, and Chinese parents never pictured their son dating a trans woman, he cares for Max in a way she’d always dismissed as a foolish fantasy. But he is also carrying baggage of his own. When the fall-out of a decades-old entanglement resurfaces, Max must decide what forgiveness really means. Can we be more than our worst mistakes? Is it possible to make peace with the past? Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, trans panic, race, millennial angst, and the relationships—familial and romantic—that make us who we are.
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Author
Nicola Dinan
Pages
320
Publisher
Random House
Published Date
2025-05-27
ISBN
0593977874 9780593977873
Community ReviewsSee all
"4.5//While the beginning was quite slow, I quickly became immersed in Max's world. I found her funny, and empathetic, despite being so withdrawn. The final scene we get in her perspective with her dad fully made me well up with tears (no crying in public, this time, though). I also quite enjoy the question that Dinan posits, even if it's a bit heavy handed. Who can be redeemed? What can be redeemed? Can we forgive? Are we weak for forgiving? What does it say if we forgive one person, but not the other? All is best wrapped up in the following quote:
"Learning about Alex forced Vincent into personhood. Not just a fantasy who bakes cakes and takes care of me and makes promises of the future, but a person who fucks up or worse. You can fall in love with an outline, you can even make a home with one, but there will come a time where you can't deny the bones their flesh. No person is fewer than two things.
What happened with Alex was despicable–there are no two ways about it–but there's a life in which bad doesn't always multiply, where the tide shifts, where awful things make people better. This is also the world where people, often women, are doomed to spend much of their lives forigiving the errors of others and suffering for the sake of other people's growth. Sometimes there's nothing to do but leave, and sometimes there's nothing to do but forgive."
It was implied in the work, yes, but Dinan expresses directly her own opinion on the matter. No room to question how she feels on the topic. For that reason, and the slow start, minus half a star. I will be seeking out all of Dinan's work, both past and future, here on out."
Carolyn V
