David Ebershoff

Loosely inspired by a true story, this tender portrait of marriage asks: What do you do when the person you love has to change? It starts with a question, a simple favour asked by a wife of her husband while both are painting in their studio, setting off a transformation neither can anticipate. Uniting fact and fiction into an original romantic vision, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the unique intimacy that defines every marriage and the remarkable story of Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history, and the woman torn between loyalty to her marriage and her own ambitions and desires. The Danish Girl is an evocative and deeply moving novel about one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the 20th century.

The Danish Girl

I put off this book for a long time because of the controversy of the film but I wanted to read it for myself. Now I intend to read a non-fiction book about Lili Elbe to see how the story compares because I think it’s important to get a  realistic portrait alongside the fictionalized version. All that being said I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As a trans person I felt it was a very compassionate, empathetic and realistic portrayal of gender dysphoria. Also, I didn’t know that Lili was intersex and I think it can serve as an introduction to that concept for many. There were many times I became emotional as the complex feelings surrounding becoming who you’ve always meant to be as well as mourning who you were. I truly hope the story is faithful to Lili’s experience as she had so many supportive people in her life though the book portrays the struggles of those people who know and love her and I think it’s important and human but does not vilify Lili. This was frankly much less traumatizing than I assumed it would be, being set in the early 20th century as it was. Heartbreakingly beautiful, a story of love, loss and hope and hopefully a way of endearing cisgender people to trans people’s stories.

Bowie 

A novel set in Copenhagen, Paris, and Dresden in the 1920s, introduces a man who discovers he is a woman, and the woman who will do anything for him, in a tale of love and marriage in the midst of fundamental crisis.

A Novel

Sarah Sammis

The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff is a fictionalized account of Einar Wegener's transformation into Lili Eiber. When the model for his wife's current painting fails to show, Einar agrees to don the costume and pose in her place. And then he begins to realize he's more comfortable being a woman. Soon he is spending most of his time as Lili Eiber.

The book is set in Finland and in Pasadena, in flashback. Einar's wife was raised in Pasadena, California. I enjoyed seeing the city at the turn of the last century, through the early 1920s, through her memories. Her emersion in the California school of art (plein air painting of sweeping landscapes in bold colors) played against Einar's small, subdued landscapes that he had fallen out of habit of painting. Through their artwork, then, their relationship and personalities are introduced and explored.

I read The Danish Girl in the same weeks as Parrotfish — a YA novel about a female to male transgender teen. The striking difference between the two is the level of support Lili receives from her wife and their friends. How much support the actual Lili received, I don't know. As a story of support in a potentially difficult stage of life — it's a lovely novel.

Katherine Yang

Tender and touching. I love that as much as this story is Lili's, it is also Greta's, and they each play such a monumental and irreplaceable role in each other's lives and in this pivotal historical milestone.

Izza

Katie Miller

Stefan R. Schmid

wylan

Louis Connaire

Juliet

Norma gruden

Julia

Aline Peeters

The Danish Girl is now a major motion picture starring Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, directed by Tom Hooper. Loosely inspired by a true story, this tender portrait of marriage asks: What do you do when the person you love has to change? It starts with a question, a simple favour asked by a wife of her husband while both are painting in their studio, setting off a transformation neither can anticipate. Uniting fact and fiction into an original romantic vision, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the unique intimacy that defines every marriage and the remarkable story of Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history, and the woman torn between loyalty to her marriage and her own ambitions and desires. The Danish Girl is an evocative and deeply moving novel about one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the 20th century.

The Danish Girl

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