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 b...