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Butch: The Full Story
Mike's journey begins as a child as she begins her search for the one who will fulfill her heart's desire. We follow her through school, service in the Marines, and relationships that provide insight into our own troubled identity. Heartfelt and poignant, the original Butch books were considered cutting-edge and necessary reads.
- GenresFictionButch FemmeLGBT
348 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 30, 2026
(1.5)
In my unrelenting search for butch-femme stories, I decided I had to read Butch, a commitment which I now deeply regret. It will remain on my 2026 reading challenge forever, taunting me with the fact that I didn't possess the strength to DNF a book which, from the start, promised to be devoid of any value for me.
Butch was a light read, and at first I appreciated it for that. After all, lesbians - butches in particular - deserve to have stories told about them that aren't mired in tragedy. But, as I came to the end of the book, I realised that this lack of emotional weight was unintentional, brought on by a simplistic writing style and a somewhat weak structure.
The people Mike loves keep dying or abandoning her, and whilst I could recognise these moments as emotional, the characters aren't developed enough to allow the loss of them to register as poignant. The short chapters and time jumps also don't give the reader time to sit with any sadness, and the shallow writing dilutes any lasting grief Mike holds on to.
The story stretches itself over a period of about twenty years in less than 200 pages, which is something that can be done well, but certainly isn't here. The chapters are short and lack substance, with time and location changed from one paragraph to the next with no description of where or when the new event is taking place. Often, characters are abandoned with minimal closure, so that the book begins to feel like an endless stream of women. And you can almost guarantee that once a woman is mentioned, Mike will end up sleeping with her.
Mike is clearly set up as a character the reader should be sympathetic to, but at certain moments she comes across as irritating and the characterisation isn't strong enough for me to look past this. A lot of her lines are iffy - not in the sense that they're necessarily offensive, but in the sense that they land wrong and prevent me from taking the book seriously. There is one throwaway comment referencing pedophilia that definitely didn't need to be included.
I'm rating this more than one star because it wasn't a slog to get through, but I certainly could have done without reading it. If you want a more light-hearted* exploration of butchness than Stone Butch Blues, go for The Swashbuckler, not whatever this is.
*Always do your own research; I read it too long ago to be able to provide accurate content warnings.
In my unrelenting search for butch-femme stories, I decided I had to read Butch, a commitment which I now deeply regret. It will remain on my 2026 reading challenge forever, taunting me with the fact that I didn't possess the strength to DNF a book which, from the start, promised to be devoid of any value for me.
Butch was a light read, and at first I appreciated it for that. After all, lesbians - butches in particular - deserve to have stories told about them that aren't mired in tragedy. But, as I came to the end of the book, I realised that this lack of emotional weight was unintentional, brought on by a simplistic writing style and a somewhat weak structure.
The people Mike loves keep dying or abandoning her, and whilst I could recognise these moments as emotional, the characters aren't developed enough to allow the loss of them to register as poignant. The short chapters and time jumps also don't give the reader time to sit with any sadness, and the shallow writing dilutes any lasting grief Mike holds on to.
The story stretches itself over a period of about twenty years in less than 200 pages, which is something that can be done well, but certainly isn't here. The chapters are short and lack substance, with time and location changed from one paragraph to the next with no description of where or when the new event is taking place. Often, characters are abandoned with minimal closure, so that the book begins to feel like an endless stream of women. And you can almost guarantee that once a woman is mentioned, Mike will end up sleeping with her.
Mike is clearly set up as a character the reader should be sympathetic to, but at certain moments she comes across as irritating and the characterisation isn't strong enough for me to look past this. A lot of her lines are iffy - not in the sense that they're necessarily offensive, but in the sense that they land wrong and prevent me from taking the book seriously. There is one throwaway comment referencing pedophilia that definitely didn't need to be included.
I'm rating this more than one star because it wasn't a slog to get through, but I certainly could have done without reading it. If you want a more light-hearted* exploration of butchness than Stone Butch Blues, go for The Swashbuckler, not whatever this is.
*Always do your own research; I read it too long ago to be able to provide accurate content warnings.
Displaying 1 of 1 review