I picked up John Irving’s new book with a little trepidation, since I knew that one of the characters is it is a trans woman, and cis people writing about trans women never ends well. I’m 36 pages in, and I haven’t gotten to the part where they mention which character is trans, but I think I can pretty much guess based on this only slightly paraphrased excerpt:

“I hope, if we do Hedda Gabler, that I won’t be cast as the dull, uncomprehending husband — I would hate to be George,” Richard Abbott said.

“Who wouldn’t hate to be George?” Miss Frost laughed, raising her unusually large hands. (When she laughed, there was something hoarse and low in her voice, which almost immediately jumped to a higher, clearer register.)

“I could play Judge Brack,” Richard Abbott surmised.

“That might be fun,” Miss Frost told him, shrugging her immense shoulders, which were much bigger than the shoulders of any other woman in town. “I fucking love Ibsen!” She bellowed.

“I see,” Richard Abbott said, clearly as shocked as I was that a woman would swear or read Ibsen.

“Have you ever read any Ibsen, Bill?” Miss Frost asked, bench pressing six hundred pounds and growing a beard before my very eyes, which I was quite certain that women did not ordinarily do.