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The Night Brother by Rosie Garland (first published in 2017 by The Borough Press)
Edie Latchford is not your average girl. Apart from being taller than all her peers, with larger hands and feet, her size is not her only disadvantage.
Edie is in constant competition with her brother, Gnome, and constant wars with her mother and accusations of imperfection fuel this intense schism. Try as she might, Edie never pleases her mother as her brother can. Instead, she retreats into herself, longing for a time when she can freely be her own person, and follow her own path.
She just needs to decide if the price of her freedom is one that she is willing to pay.
The Night Brother is the very definition of duality - an incredibly clever take on the modern topics of gender identity and sexuality.
Edie and Gnome are rivals for love, understanding and time, presenting bodies constantly at war with themselves yet nevertheless loveable and able to love, illustrating that a ‘slippery sense of syntax’ is irrelevant to the deeper connections between people, and the light which love and understanding provides.
More impressive than the sheer complexity of brilliantly illustrating two unique protagonists within a single shell is the emotional evolution undergone by the siblings – every array of emotion from anger to jealousy is fully (and very understandably) experienced before a blissful peace unites the sparring duo.
That in itself is a marvellous journey for any reader to witness; regardless of great emotional and psychological setbacks, our characters are so deserving of their happy ending.
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