Best Bisexual/Transgender Contemporary (3° Place): Dee Dee Day by Mykola Dementiuk

[reviews_and_ramblings]

If you know Mykola Dementiuk’s works, Times Queer, Holy Communion, you know that reading Dee Dee Day you will not find a classical romance. And how it could be? This is the story of a young man in the ‘70s who fall obsessed (obsessed not in love) with his elder landowner, a 72 years old woman called Dee Dee.

When Bill sees for the first time Dee Dee, he thinks she is an attractive woman of maybe 50 years, and he is not sexually attracted by her; but then he has the chance to discover Dee Dee’s secret, she is born as Richard, but she never looked like a boy and her own parents decided to let her dress and be like a girl. In those old time, Dee Dee was happy and in love with Billy, a same age boy who sadly died during the WWII. Now Dee Dee is living in an house full of Billy’s memories, mainly photos of that period, and I think she is only waiting for the time when she will be with him again.

If the reader thinks this is a sad story, he has also to think that, truly, Dee Dee is not in love with Bill; she is nice with him, and yes, maybe she is also attracted by him, who will be not? But at 72 years old she has not a second chance at love, she is only having a nice affair that maybe it will be useful to Bill. Bill is still uncomfortable with his body and desires, and Dee Dee helps him understand all better: Dee Dee knows that Bill is not for her, that Bill will go and find his true love, like Dee Dee did and found in Billy.

All the story is set in a past era, the ’70s and the ‘40s of Dee Dee’s memories; it’s strange how to see that Dee Dee considers the ‘70s not a good time for gay people, and instead she thinks that in the ‘40s they had a better life. It’s not the first time I read a story about gay lovers of the ‘40s and it’s not the first time that I have this feeling that, more or less, in the ‘40s they had no right, but simple since they were not recognized as existing, but in the end, they could love each other in the closet.

Again, if the reader thinks that this novella has not a happy ending, I think he is wrong. It has the only possibly happy ending and this experience serves to Bill to be able to build his life; the same Dee Dee I think was not expecting nothing else, and probably she was the first to push Bill to find his own path in life.

A note on the publisher: I think they dared a lot with this story that is not their usual trend, an historical novella (if ‘70s can be considered “historical”) and an out of romance rules story, and I think they should be awarded for it with readers taking notice of that.



http://www.extasybooks.com/ebjmsite/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=ebook_flypage.tpl&product_id=7336&category_id=8&manufacturer_id=156&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=50

Amazon Kindle: Dee Dee Day

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Comments

Dee Dee Day

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks Elisa for reading it. A great review. And I'm sure the publisher thought these things twice and I'm glad they made the right choice.

Mick

http://www.mykoladementiuk.com
mydem@comcast.net
Holy Communion won the 2009 Rainbow Award for Best Overall Bisexual/Transvestite book and 2nd place for 2009 Rainbow Awards: Best Coming of Age / Young Adult Novel

Re: Dee Dee Day

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

You are welcome Mick, I feel you in this story. Elisa