This book was written as a kind of social experiment that the suthor says, 'almost became a game'. She took a single protagonist and wrote two stories; one with the lead character as male and then another with the same life as a woman. Both these stories run concurrently through the book in alternating chapters that take the character from birth to about thirty years old.
It's a a good idea, and quite relevant these days when we hear so much more about gender fluidity, but I think the good idea somehow got in the way of the story. I think I would have happily read either version as a book in its own right, but the constant changing from one to the other felt a little disruptive, even though having two stories is the whole point of the book.
The core of the story is set in a small American town in Maine where a family owns a paper mill that provides employment for almost everyone else in the town. As with most towns, there are residential areas that are occupied by the white collar workers and other areas that are more affordable for the manual workers. Two young girls, Peggy and Mary, have been born into the side with the manual labourers and Peggy goes on to marry the mill owner's son while Mary marries a factory man. Despite the change in social circumstances, Peggy and Mary remain friends and their children Louis/Louise and Allie grow up as best friends. As the title of the book suggests, Louis and Louise are examined from both gender perspectives.
It works, but somehow I would rather that the story had stuck to Lou as a boy and then drilled into how Peggy and Mary managed to maintain their friendship after they both married men from very differnet social classes. in 1978, that would have been a much bigger issue to deal with than how gender was going to affect your children.
In the end, it was an interesting idea and the writing style is easy to read, but didn't quite hit the mark for me.
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