Love the World or Get Killed Trying

by Alvina Chamberland

Through playful poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor Love the World or Get Killed Trying dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30. The reader is invited to follow her journey through the breathtaking wilderness of Iceland and busy city boulevards of Berlin and Paris as she probes questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you’re a ceaseless target of straight men’s secret lust and open disgust. This novel tackles universal issues through a trans woman’s specific lens – insisting on these experiences speaking to far more than just issues of sexuality and gender.

Reaching its climax through an urgent wildfire scream-of-consciousness, cry-of-love-manifesto, Love the World or Get Killed Trying is a raw and vulnerable work of magical brutalist autofiction; abstract in the sense of poetically digging beneath the surface, and experimental in the sense of trying to find out new things and express them in new ways, while concretely asserting that if trans women one day collectively outed every man who seeks them out, a full-blown revolution would ensue by nightfall.

Genres: Queer, Transgender, Fiction, LGBT, Contemporary, Gender, Adult

274 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2024

Reviews

[Charlott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love The World or Get Killed Trying by Alvina Chamberland is one of these amazing genre-expensive novels which are highly entertaining, emotionally resonating, and are an intellectual treat - all at the same time, with tenderness, humour and skill.

This novel follows Alvina, a trans woman fast approaching her 30th birthday, traveling to lceland, back to Berlin, and lastly to Paris. On her journey, the protagonist reflects on her life, on intimacy (and the lack thereof), on art and literature, on violence and longing.

The entire book, we are in Alvina's head and while (or because?) she is at times a mess, it's a wildly fascinating place. Every single page is packed with references from writers like Clarice Lispector and Marlen Haushofer to dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. But it never feels like a pure name-dropping exercise but instead Chamberland weaves a complex net of references using these as starting points or illustrations for her contemplations.

Chamberland has created a fantastic voice. The narrator, Alvina, is constantly adressing the reader, making the readers part of the process thinking (and feeling) through things.

I got all the things hoped for from this novel, but furthermore was suprised by a lot of things which just spoke to me on a very fun personal level (like, too, have an interesting story about looking for a grave of a famous dancer at a Parisian cemetery). I have been to a lot of the places mentioned in the novel and I loved re-visiting them through Alvina's specific lense and experiences. I also read this novel at the same time as was reading Jules Gil-Peterson's A Short History of Trans Misogyny and think this made for an excelent pairing.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, reading this book was a mixed experience for me. While I think the author makes some important points about transmisogyny and how it is a defining part of the lives of many trans women, I also felt that the book missed an opportunity to be more nuanced. As I was reading, I kept wondering why she centers cis men so heavily. I am aware that she has stated in an interview that she is mostly attracted to them rather than trans men, but at times this focus feels like a strange form of privileging and also runs counter to her own argument about passing trans women.

While struggles within straight, bi, and queer transfeminine community spaces are certainly different, they are still very real. In particular, economic struggles, given the high rates of unemployment among transfeminine people, can directly affect the viability of trans lesbianism. Similarly, her omission of race, alongside claims of being the most oppressed while traveling the world, struck me as odd and unfortunately aligned with stereotypes about white trans people.

Related to this, I wish she had not only quoted feminists and philosophers but engaged with their ideas more deeply. A more sustained engagement could have helped address these nuances more carefully. In the end, the book sometimes felt like a missed opportunity to think more deeply about solidarity and community within different but related struggles, rather than focusing primarily on yearning, even though yearning is undoubtedly important as well.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

i reccomend!

[Cassandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay hear me out…. In theory this book should have been everything I loved. Prose, queer, a bit dark! I even purchased a copy signed by the author. I was enjoying the first third and this totally crashed and burned for me. Absolute masterclass in self pity and the author absolutely cannot read the room.

This was published in 2024, the author MULTIPLE times calls themself the lowest class in society. A white European American woman trying to play the oppression Olympics in a post BLM world is craaaazy. Alvina is a white Swedish American so I know she knows how Latino immigrants are being treated in the US right now. The book is written during her travels to places like Iceland and Paris. The privilege to even go to these countries is completely lost on her, legal Latino immigrants are being illegally detained at our borders when they try to travel.

Alvina also spends way too much time telling us how smart and funny and terminally unique and feminine she is and how this makes it hard to date her. We get it, you’re amazing. Entirely too much time is spent looking for love in clubs where we know it simply isn’t to be found. Bad conversations with men in clubs isn’t specific to the trans experience, that’s the life of every woman.

And finally, the excessive use of the term “lapdog” instead of laptop genuinely drove me insane. Couldn’t stand it for no specific reason.

This would have been better served as staying a diary, or a conversation with a therapist. There was a huge missed opportunity to develop the story further past surface level complaining and we just never really got there. The author started to get there with the comments about rape but I don’t feel that it was developed enough. The only redeeming quality was the unique writing style. At the very end when she says “why am I telling you all of this?” I think that summarized my feelings pretty well.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has locked in the top spot on my best of the year list already. It’s simply not possible that anyone can top it.

Chamberland’s novel is an autofiction masterpiece. Alvina is a captivating narrator who relates her experiences as a trans woman with great beauty and powerful emotion. Chamberland takes us through moments of joy, sorrow, loss, contentment, alienation, fear, and determination that are tangibly raw, while never losing her firm control as a supremely talented writer. I give this novel the highest possible recommendation. As a depiction of a trans experience, but even more so as a stunning literary achievement.

[Emily Cacho · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very challenging read. Although the book itself if relatively short it took me months to read. It is written as a sort of stream of consciousness which was difficult to follow at times. I also found the prose to be very flowery and pretentious. While I appreciated hearing about a trans woman’s experience I don’t think this book was for me.

[emrys · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

“In the most ornate caverns of my own mind, I caress all that I’ll never be granted access to. These are the irreplaceable gifts you can send to yourself if you belong to a class of women that has never been protected.” (133)

tw: transphobia, sexual assault

This book was difficult. I put it down for multiple months more than once, as the whiplash between gruesome abuse and lyrical, stream-of-consciousness prose often became tiring.

It is an autofictional account of a few weeks the author spent in Reykjavik, Berlin, and Paris in 2018. It is at once a distillation of the abuse of trans women globally (but especially in western culture), and a glimpse into the incomparable mind of Alvina, who wants so deeply to love and be love despite it all. Never have I met a protagonist who cares so deeply — she mourns the bugs splattered on the windshield of the bus she takes from Paris to Berlin. She daydreams about a mathematician with kind eyes at her local library. She is catcalled, groped, and raped by cis men at various points throughout the book. When not being sexually abused, she is laughed at or taunted by cis men and women alike. And still she loves, she dreams.

The prose is unlike anything I’ve read before, but this is my first foray into autofiction, so it may be more typical of a genre I’m unfamiliar with. With every page, every sentence, Chamberland begs you to look at her, her life, her existence, without rose-colored glasses, in all its beauty and monstrosity (the latter coming from others’ actions). And so, having looked, I will beg you as well. This is not a coming out story, nor a cracking the shell story; it is simply the truth of established existence as a trans woman. It is beautiful, and it will break your heart, and you won’t enjoy it, but you should still read it. As Alvina often reminds the reader, you only have to live her life within the pages of the book — she has no such luxury.

[Ren · Rating 4 out of 5]

humorous and emotional, I was surprised at how difficult this book was to get through. not on account of the writing, which I really enjoyed, but because of how painful nearly every sentence is. a lot of repetition around certain tropes - specifically being desired and being called out as intimidatingly smart or beautiful - did irk me at times, but because the author acknowledges this decision I came to appreciate it (something to the lines of: "if you think this is annoying imagine how I feel living it")

Alvina speaks as honestly as she can, and somehow manages to not place blame on the person, instead the system that puts her and people like her down. her book does an excellent job at trying to reach out to anybody who wants to better understand the reality of being a trans woman.

I would look forward to any future work should she decide to write another

[Ot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overweldigend eerlijk,gevuld met zinnen die ik zou willen dat ik kon schrijven;
“ as the bus drives through a landscape of lush hills filled with grass and sheep who wont become meat market fashion victims If I have a say in the matter, which I dont”

“Fancy cars a.k.a male stilletos”
“Empathy is love - non detached compassion beyond the fixed borders of identity politics”

Het zit gewoon helemaal vol met tegelijkertijd hilarische taal en zware thema’s, vol hoop schrijft ze haar gedachten achterna. Dit is een boek waarvan ik enorm blij ben dat ik het toevallig tegengekomen ben.

[Zahra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soms vond ik het boek iets te zweverig naar mijn voorkeur, maar nog steeds een heel mooie, moedige, oprechte en soms ook hartverscheurende getuigenis van het leven als transvrouw. Enorm veel respect voor Alvina.

[Fin · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of it was so moving & powerful but overall it just felt a lil too rambly for me

[Naveed L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Patty Smith had the standpoint she’d have written this: very depressing yet beautifully written :)

[Hind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing writing. Stream of consciousness but also with plenty of beautiful prose. Tread with care if you’re a trans woman. Would very highly rec otherwise!

[Brooke Chomko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not like any book I’ve ever read in that it’s like reading someone’s super personal, graphic diary. Felt like it kind of lacked a purpose outside of cynicism

[Jess Putney · Rating 5 out of 5]

the most human portrayal of the mind of mine and other trans women…thought provoking, emotive, bittersweet to the very end, I felt like I was inside the authors mind in the best way, Alvina you are a genius and a gift!

[Sian · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
I loved the writing style and the beginning. It's quite plotless and I should have read it in a shorter period of time but didn't and that's on me.

[isabelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

genuinely might be the worst book I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. The prose is manic, disjointed, and whiny. I agree it’s shit that trans women are simultaneously demonized and fetishized, and I’m all for a trans woman having a meltdown, but everything she writes makes her so unlikeable. It’s really hard to have sympathy when she’s, for instance, at what is surely a stunning waterfall in Iceland and yet all she does is complain and think melodramatically about giving her ex a blowjob, or when she goes to the club multiple times and cries in the bathroom the entire time, like “wahh why do all men treat me like a sex object and not a real person?” and then she CONTINUES going to the club and on dating apps where, no shit, that is how men act in both of those places and idk why she’d expect anything different!! Not to mention spending 6 entire pages moaning about her impending death on the flight home from her vacation in Iceland because she’s scared to death of flying. Maybe this is news to you but you don’t HAVE to go on vacation in Iceland! I also can’t stress enough how easy it is to NOT go to the club and NOT be on dating apps, and then you wouldn’t even have to write 250 pages complaining about it!

The biggest problem with the prose and style generally is it undercuts her message. For example, she gets physically assaulted and nearly raped for the first 5 pages and yet the narration is too busy talking about cigarette brands and rabbit feces and axe body spray and a block of cream cheese left unwrapped on the beach and covered in sand, etc, etc, like is this a joke or not? Do you want me to feel something about the senseless violence you’re going through or not?? If there was a point here it’d be much better served by just relaying the story and not constantly descending into purple prose madness. It’s stream of consciousness and whatever but I wish we had cut it down a bit and just made all our points in 50 pages or so instead of 250 pages of sprawling, narcissistic, horny word vomit.

The positives:
- Fun(?) fact before the book even started: porn about trans women is the most popular and profitable porn out there for the straight male audience. yikes!
- It was not boring, mostly because she gets so much mileage out of the shock value of bringing up sex/piss/shit/slurs/graphic violence at least once a page, and I was always wondering what fucked up shit she’d say next. I am fascinated by why she would choose to write any of this!
- The Paris section was surprisingly bearable because it’s not whiny, she’s actually happy once in a while, and she even expresses the points she wanted to make with writing this book. So I would give that part 2 stars <3
- I would give the acknowledgments credit for having the best sentence in the book (the one in the synopsis - you're not missing anything), but she ruins it the very next page by unironically saying "To boot my IQ is sky-high."

In the end I mostly just feel bad for her. I hope she goes to therapy and stops writing books that paint trans people in such a negative light.

[Rhiannon Robear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok girls, buckle yourselves the fuck in.

"if every trans woman globally one day collectively outed all the men who've sought us out, a full-blown revolution would occur by nightfall"

Alvina Chamberland takes a mirror to the heart and soul of trans womanhood in this wild ass journey of a book. It took me a minute to get into it because it's written with both really complex language, but also stream of consciousness/ format breaking ways. This made it feel clunky or almost like an ambush or avalanche of words at times, but they all resonated so deeply. It's kind of like a long ass ketamine fueled journal entry/ written vlog, but you get used to the style and pacing as you go.

I had to finish this over many different sittings because it was so much to sit with, to digest, to feel.

I felt how I felt reading Casey Plett's trans women characters, or hearing about the messiness of Reese from Torrey Peter's Destransition, Baby. That's not to say that this book seemed fictional or cliche, but rather that I could feel the pangs and feelings of warmth, of envy, of rage, of shame, of sadness, of the entire emotional range of trans womanhood. She is me, is her, is us all.

Sometimes I try and explain to people that even though chasers/ the men who fuck dolls don't like speak to each other and figure out ways of interacting with us, they truly do follow the same patterns wherever I have been. This book messily and boldly and raw-ly describes the ways that trans womanhood and desirability and secrecy and shame all interact and weave together in interpersonal ways, but patterned in an almost global context?

It's hard to explain, but its very if you know, you know. and I simply know.

This book made me screech with laughter, and made me feel so much sorrow. It made me feel less lonely, in seeing my loneliness described by another. It's interesting to think how much of the book was about men and power and desirability, but that is simply just so relevant in my life, its what I contend with, that it felt only natural.

This book asks us all to move on from this baseline ass regular-degular idea that 'trans women are women', and instead it pleads for and dreams of a future where trans women are simply loveable and worthy of love and respect and consideration.

Thank you for this treasure diva!

[Els · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the world or get killed trying. Door: Alvina Chamberland.

Ik herinner me de kleur van zijn ogen, veel te dicht bij die van mij, niet meer. Ik weet nog wel welk liedje er speelde (Paint it black) omdat ik nog steeds misselijk wordt als het op de radio voorbijkomt. Dat is wat Chamberland lezen met je doet: het roept een hele wereld op, ook dingen die je je liever niet herinnert. Trigger warning dus.

Ik ben/was een cisvrouw die er heel lang als een grote kleuterjongen uitzag, mannelijke aandacht overkwam me niet vaak. De juiste toch niet. Ik heb mijn portie foute aandacht gehad maar die valt in het niet qua aantal en impact bij wat Alvina als transvrouw meemaakt(e).

Ik kan me dus soms enigszins in haar verplaatsen maar vaak ook niet. Wat niet erg is want daar brengt zij meeslepend en vakkundig verandering in, Love the world or get killed trying is zo moedig, eerlijk, niets ontziend pijnlijk openhartig dat er een hele wereld voor je opengaat. Je kijkt mee door Chamberlands ogen naar de wereld die haar omringt én de wereld in haar hoofd. Die wereld is verre van rooskleurig jammer genoeg. Cismannen begeren haar volop maar nooit voor wie ze is, wél om wat ze is (transvrouw).

De eenzaamheid, wanhoop, boosheid, rusteloosheid die dat teweegbrengt is pijnlijk om te lezen. Ik herken haar hypochondrie, liefde voor de natuur, slapeloosheid, piekeren,… Maar ik heb als troost een gelukkige relatie die me kan omarmen als de wereld te eng aanvoelt. Ik wens Alvina dat ook toe.

Wat een moedige vrouw, wat een boeiend boek!

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alvina Chamberland is heir apparent to Jean Genet in his novelist mode. Or so it first appeared to me when reading "Love the World or Get Killed Trying." (And you know I love me some Genet!) Halfway through her book, however, either the writing shifted or my POV did. Full disclosure: I picked up her book again after a few month hiatus, at which point, the autofiction seemed to change its raison d'être. What had initially felt like exuberant defiance (when Chamberland recounts a trip to Iceland) morphed into raw confessional (when she recalls her trip to Paris). A longing to connect informs both sections but in the latter half of "Love the World...," the loneliness grows more pronounced. As Chamberland herself states, and here I paraphrase, Gays and Lesbians are looking to have love relationships accepted while Trans women are looking to survive. It's a cruel imbalance that highlights just how anti-trans matters are. Chamberland's "magical, brutalist" novel, full of wit as well as pain, wisdom as well as fury, isn't required reading. But it could be. Her analysis of the dynamic between straight men and straight trans women is totally on the money!

[Sophie Fennelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the World or Get Killed Trying was out June book club pick, and yet despite it only being 250 pages long, it took me the best part of two months to get finish this book. This was partially down to me (I moved house in this time and fell out of the habit of picking up physical books and into a reading slump), but also partially down to the book - as much as it was enjoyable to read, I never found myself thinking about it after I’d put it down.

The novel follows Alvina, a trans woman about to turn 30, as she ponders questions of ageing, love, and longing. I really wanted to LOVE this novel, but unfortunately I found myself not liking it. Chamberland’s prose is exquisite, but the narrator’s voice is too disconnected and tends to tell her emotions rather than showing them, making Alvina difficult to empathise with, no matter how universal the emotions she experience are.

This isn’t a bad book at all, but it was, at least for me, a disappointment. That said, the writing was overwhelmingly beautiful, and I am definitely curious to follow Chamberland’s English language career.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is more memoir adjacent as Chamberland is more conveying the feelings of experiences rather than her exact life or some exact story that happened. She has this beautiful way of crafting a story where it enmeshes you in this pure, raw feeling of it. Her wordcraft is unique and unlike anything I've seen before. I loved how she forces the reader to be involved. We as the reader are constantly being addressed and invited in to sit with the narrative, to witness abuse hurled at her, to understand her feelings. It's a book that I feel like delves right into your heart and screams at it to pay attention! Pay attention to Alvina! See her but not as some oddity but as a person living a deep and richly felt life. She does not shy from how she has been brutalized by the world, in fact she opens the book a recounting of her rape, and I think it firmly sets the kind of book this is.

[Alejandra Ortiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A -trans- Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown…

My dear friend miss Alvina Chamberland was in The Netherlands to present her book Love the World Or Get Killed Trying. I got a signed copy of my own, and I’m sure enjoying her witty, smart, loving, funny and at times too confrontational way of writing.

I’m reading her and I’m reading my own incessant internal dialogues. Her writing tastes like an Almodovar film mixed with magic realism (or Magic Brutalism, a term coined by her to explain the extremes of the trans experience, in a world not ready for us).
In a way she is me, us, and we all are Alvina.

Get a copy, enjoy it, leave reviews and give it to your love ones (cis and trans alike).

[J Knuchel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vraag me niet wat de plot was maar ik begrijp het wel.
Eigenlijk een beetje een koortsdroom.
Soms iets te wollig (ja, zelfs voor mij) maar als ik in de mood was heel goed te doen.
Brutaal eerlijk en angstloos geschreven.
Hier wat onderstreepjes:

"Reader, follow me now, quickly, up the escalators, to the roof! I am on top of the world. I am the toast of Paris. I sashay foreward in my stilettos. You would almost think i am a young, self-confident woman. I am not."

" You know dating a trans girl is like opening a bag of chips in church, everyone stares with scorn but deep down they want some chips too..."

"My theory is lack of love kills more trans girls than punches, stares, stabs, dysphoria, rapes, gropes, guns and bullying put togheter."

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

“i will never understand why my feminine body garners so much attention, while my superpower, my feminine intensity, is feared like a rushing flood or the point of a needle.”

very clarice lispector - hard to read at times for multiple reasons (difficult content, heavy lyricism) but this is not a criticism of the book so much as it is a criticism of my own brain. social media ruined my attention span. the narrator’s voice is one of the absolute strongest i’ve read in a book all year. it felt like listening to the sister ive always wanted tell me all about her life and i was rapt. extremely fun despite the dark subject matter

[Kassandra S · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be completely honest. I think I was not in the place for lyrical prose so I found the main character incredibly annoying for the first half of the book.

In retrospect, I think I needed a bit more show and lot less tell. The part where the main character is in Paris were my favorite parts but when she started to turn back to the reader to say things again I literally thought to myself: ugh, stop talking to me!!! (Perhaps I was too exposed ahahaha)

In the acknowledgements section, the author says the lyrical prose was a political choice and her reasons make sense. Her style was effective and thought provoking, so I can only rate it 5 stars!

[Shze-Hui Tjoa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the privilege to be one of the early readers of this novel! It’s glorious - funny, incisive, playful, poetic, asking big political and philosophical questions while not being afraid to take risks with its form. As a fellow writer, I personally felt that there was a ton for me to learn from this book - especially in how Chamberland constructs the protagonist’s interior life/world, taking us to the edge of the self with flair and authenticity. Would highly recommend this novel.

[McKenzie Wark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alvina has a distinctive voice and it was a pleasure to spend time with that voice reading this book. It manages to find comedy in the absurd circumstances of life as a hot trans woman who is attracted to men. Its a hard lane to end up in and Alvina writes about it with wit and grace. Its not a victim story. The Alvina character (who may or may not be Alvina in everyday life) can be kind of a hot mess, and that warms me to her story as we've all been a mess at some time or other, hot or not.

[Emma]

i don’t want to rate this, because i just really did not enjoy the writing style at all. it wasn’t badly written, i just found it to be a frustrating reading experience (for me). i also didn’t realize this was auto fiction, which i usually try to avoid. it brought up super valid ideas, just not in a way that worked for me!

[Morgan M. Page · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like is Clarice Lispector and Nina Arsenault shared a nervous breakdown.