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< The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society > David Ebershoff

The author expertly weaves these facts, which were the inspiration for this novel, into a lyrically written, haunting narrative about two people who were bound to each other by an unconditional love that would transcend the conventional. He creates an intriguing, spellbinding story that is a sensitive portrait of a most unusual marriage. The author takes the reader on a journey into the imagined psyche of these two individuals, as their marriage slowly devolves and Lili becomes more and more prominent in their lives. The author leads the reader through Lili's gradual metamorphosis, her poignant self-realization, and the final denouement of the marriage. This is an exquisitely crafted novel by a very gifted writer. Bravo!
David Ebershoff's debut novel"The Danish Girl"is a glacially exquisite piece of work that takes as its subject the true story of the world's first transexual but is in essence a story about love, the strangeness of love.

Ebershoff's perspective of Greta's and Einar's/Lili's relationship is coolly cerebral and unsentimental. Even the strange bleeding phenomenon that visits Einar/Lili is treated in the most clear-eyed and unsensational way. Unafraid to explore the subterranean realms of human consciousness, his dare and genius is to make us believe the impossible, that love can transcend the inversion of a normal conjugal relationship. Which wife would ask her husband to slip into a woman's shoes if only for a pose ......unless she senses - albeit subconsciously - something essentially female about his inner self ? Right through the early stages of Einar's transformation into Lili, it almost seems like Greta is coaxing Lili out of Einar's closet without a thought for the implications of their relationship. With Lili out in the open, Einar's personality withdraws, grows indistinct and then disappears. Only when Lili finally emerges and falls in love does Greta recognise that the Einar/Greta relationship has unalterably ended.

Ebershoff's curious tale of an unusual love is genuinely heartwarming and never less than absorbing. It is also relentlessly sad and true. A beautifully written novel.
Ebershoff's moving«The Danish Girl» is a rare find, a book you cannot put down and that holds your interest right to the end. Ebershoff presents his main characters in layers, carefully peeling away their exteriors to reveal their inner motivations and conflicts. The author takes an actual event and fleshes it outwith characters who represent the various challenges facing Einar Wegener, a Danish painter who, though born a man, wants to be a woman. He is abetted in this quest by his wife, the American born Greta Waud. Greta is a unique character, and her singularity plays into her acceptance--and encouragement--of her husband's desire. This is as much her book as it is Einar's. Ebershoff's strength comes from his avoidance of the sensational or grotesque; it's a pleasure to read a novel on such a subject void of any heavy-handed manipualtion or sensationalism. An excellent book of rare feeling that poses lingering questions about identity.
In his effort to be believable, to try to approximate the true story on which the novel is based, I feel the author leans sometimes too far into pedantics. But as an example of the growing body of work on transgender issues, The Danish Girl is much more than a worthy example.
What a great book! Author David Ebershoff writes an incredibly beautiful novel on the life of Einar Wagner and his journey to became Lili Elbe. While I know very little about the actual events that are the basis for this novel Ebershoff writes with such vivid detail that I felt tlike I was there as a reader. While Einar/Lilli is a geat character, I was amazed at the character of Greta (Einar's wife and Lilli's friend) who accepts her husband's life, which slowly and painfully comes to a point where a decison must be made between the two for the both of them. Good books like this don't come often and that makes me want to treasure this work that much more.
Though the title character of David Ebershoff's debut novel is a transsexual, the book is less concerned with transgender issues than the mysterious and ineffable nature of love. Loosely based on the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener who, in 1931, became the first man to undergo a sex-change operation,The Danish Girlborrows the bare bones of his story as a jumping-off point for an exploration of how Wegener's decisions affected the people around him. Chief among these is his Californian wife, Greta, also a painter, who unwittingly sets her husband's feet on the path to transformation. While trying to finish a portrait of an opera singer who has cancelled a sitting, she asks Einar to stand in for her subject, putting on her dress, stockings, and shoes. The moment silk touches his skin, he is shaken:

Einar could concentrate only on the silk dressing his skin, as if it were a bandage. Yes, that was how it felt the first time: the silk was so fine and airy that it felt like a gauze--a balm-soaked gauze lying delicately on healing skin. Even the embarrassment of standing before his wife began to no longer matter, for she was busy painting with a foreign intensity in her face. Einar was beginning to enter a shadowy world of dreams where Anna's dress could belong to anyone, even to him.