The Third Person

by Emma Grove

In the winter of 2004, a shy woman named Emma sits in Toby’s office. She wants to share this wonderful new book she’s reading, but Toby, her therapist, is concerned with other things. Emma is transgender, and has sought out Toby for approval for hormone replacement therapy. Emma has shown up at the therapy sessions as an outgoing, confident young woman named Katina, and a depressed, submissive workaholic named Ed. She has little or no memory of her actions when presenting as these other two people. And then Toby asks about her childhood . . .

As the story unfolds, we discover clues to Emma’s troubled past and how and why these other two people may have come into existence. As Toby juggles treating three separate people, each with their own unique personalities and memories, he begins to wonder if Emma is merely acting out to get attention, or if she actually has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Is she just a troubled woman in need of help? And is “the third person” in her brain protecting her, or derailing her chances of ever finding peace?

The Third Person is a riveting memoir from newcomer Emma Grove. Drawn in thick, emotive lines, with the refined style of a comics vet, Grove has created a singular, gripping depiction of the intersection of identities and trauma. The Third Person is a testament to the importance of having the space to heal and live authentically.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Comics, Mental Health

920 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2022

Reviews

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on therapy and the many struggles trans people encounter in transitioning specifically and in society in general
Let’s talk about the third person in the room who isn’t here.

In The Third Person we follow a person who tries to get approval for transitioning from a therapist. Initially the meetings go well enough, but soon more personalities become apparent, with Emma, Katina, Ed/Edgar taking the main stage during therapy sessions with therapist Toby.

Throughout the book we see how the therapist becomes personally invested, at times he becomes angry, accuses the main character of lying. At the start of the sessions, when he got an inclination Emma might be suffering from dissociative identity disorder, he tries to refer her to another therapist, and the further we get in the story the better that thought seems to be.

Confirm or die is something Emma says when reflecting on her childhood. The bullying of the other children for being too feminine, and abuse by her father, not to say of early girlfriends, make for some harrowing passages. The clean, understated drawing style of Emma Grove adds to this. Also discrimination against transpeople on the labor market is a big topic in this book.
In the end the main character finds more understanding and support, but the way towards this is long and rocky. An impressive work, at times repetitive, but this only fits the whole therapy setting, and definitely emotionally impactful.

[Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't be intimidated by this book's page count- I read the entire thing in one evening. The simple yet expressive art, the well-paced dialogue and emotional journey of the lead character drew me in. Grove writes of her experience seeking therapy to advance her gender transition, only to uncover a Dissociative Identity Disorder and a deep well of unprocessed childhood trauma. The majority of the story takes place in a therapist's office, in which a questionable medical professional out of his depth tries to sort through the truth of Grove's three distinct alters. Misunderstandings and deliberate concealments on the part of both the therapist and the patient lead them to distrust each other, accuse each other of lying, and at various points storm out of therapy sessions on each other. Yet, these sessions continued for over six months and did begin to chip away at some of the blocked memories Grove was hiding from herself. I left this narrative with a much better understanding of how Dissociative Identity Disorder manifests and the struggle it is to live with. I have so much empathy for the author, and I'm extremely glad she was able to heal to the point where writing this book was possible. I had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy and writing a blurb for this book!

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Over 900 pages, and probably more than 700 of them are spent with the author and her various therapists sitting in chairs talking. And talking. And talking. Covering the same ground over and over, from different angles sometimes, but still the same stuff. And most of the sessions are with a truly terrible therapist named Toby who acts nowhere close to professional as he gets emotionally vested and twisted and constantly breaks up and makes up with his patient like they're in a bad romantic relationship or are eighth grade BFFs.

The therapy is intended to provide clearance so Grove can begin hormone therapy for the next stage of gender transition. But diagnosis of a previously masked disorder derails everything and Grove needs to do some healing before her life can truly begin. And the journey is quite interesting at times, but then becomes lost as page piles upon page upon page upon page, almost all of them adhering religiously to a monotonous eight-panel grid. And having sat through all the ups and downs of the therapy sessions, the revelation of the core trauma feels anticlimactic, leaving me with a feeling that something is being withheld, condensed, or skimmed over for the sake of wrapping everything up with a neat bow.

Side note: The sheer bulkiness of the book becomes a distraction, too heavy to hold in one hand, and too awkward to read unless you're sitting or holding it on your chest while lying down. The gutter is so tight and the book so thick that even when the book is wide open, the panels in the middle are curved or can only be viewed at an angle unless you constantly shift the book's position or break the spine. I recommend reading this in a digital format if at all possible.

[Oriana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is most certainly a work of genius coaxed slowly and achingly out of a mind so twisted up by trauma it seems staggering that anything could have come through at all. I can't really say I enjoyed it because it's much, much too harrowing for that. But what a brilliant, devastating achievement.

[Elizabeth A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bailed at page 518.

This chunkster of a graphic memoir didn't work for me at all. I did not mind the sketchy black and white illustration style. What got to me were the pages and pages of scenes with the therapist. Yes, he was not very professional, but it felt really repetitive. Maybe that was what the author was going for here, but I was bored.

How does one get bored with the true life story of a trans woman who might also be bipolar, and has multiple personalities? And yet I was. While I'm glad the author made it out to the other side, and I hope this finds its way into hands of people who need it, it landed on my DNF pile.

[Liz]

I wanted to walk into the panels of this book and push Toby off the edge of the world. Emma’s harrowing experiences with D.I.D. and a suspicious, mean-spirited therapist made for a really hard read on this one.

[Rocio Voncina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Titulo: The Third Person
Autor: Emma Grove
Motivo de lectura: Letras Macabras (Isla Macabra 2023)
Lectura / Relectura: Lectura
Mi edicion: Electronico
Puntuacion: 5/5

What I wanted to say to her..what I couldn't bring myself to say back..what I just didn't have the courage to say was..I AM TOO

Esta novela grafica comienza con una nota por parte de la autora, dejando en claro (repetidas veces) que todo lo expresado es real, y no inventado. Esta obra es un trabajo personal y muy intimo, en forma de memoria editado en novela grafica.

Emma es una persona transgenero que va a un terapista de genero para conseguir la autorizacion de las hormonas y asi poder transicionar. Pero el profesional le niega esa autorizacion..por que? Porque Emma tiene un trastorno de identidad disociativo (antiguamente conocido como personalidad multiple), hasta no intentar resolver esto, el profesional no puede dar la autorizacion. Asi que a terapia asistiran Emma, Ed y Katina.

El trastorno de identidad disociativo esta asociado a un mecanismo de defensa en orden para poder lidiar con los traumas. Para explicarlo en palabras muy basicas, imaginen que estan viviendo una situacion de trauma constante (por ejemplo ser golpeado diariamente), llegara un momento en que la mente creara "personas" que tomaran el lugar para ser golpeados, y de esa manera intentar protegerse uno mismo. Hay testimonios donde la disociacion es tan inmensa que una persona podria ni siquiera tener recuerdos de ser golpedo, abusado, etc. Como si todo lo malo le ocurriera a otra persona. Cuando una persona disocia es como esconderse en su propia mente, y son las otras personalidades que surgen al rescate, claramente es un mecanismo de defensa ante el horror que ya no puede ser soportado por la mente conciente.

Durante la trama se abordan muchisimos temas, ser antisocial, la incomodidad del cuerpo, el miedo al cambio, la falta de recuerdos de la niñez, varios temas de salud mental,
La presion del resto para que Emma no transicione vs. el deseo de la persona de transicionar. A menudo las personas que estan en contra tienen la creencia que transicionar involucra perder a la persona, cuando en realidad es una transformacion en la busqueda de sentirse mejor, de hallarse en el mundo, de estar comodo/a.

La importancia de encontrar un terapista como Toby, quien sabe entender los tiempos, y aunque a veces la presionaba, su intension no era lastimarla, sino mas bien liberarla de la carga del trauma. Aunque como todo, hubo momentos donde las sesiones no eran faciles, pero siento que ni Toby, ni Emma se rindieron, a pesar de las dificultades.

Con respecto a la ilustracion, no soy una persona apta para juzgar esto desde un aspecto tecnico, pero el arte de Emma Grove trasmite muchisimo, se te mete en el alma, hay viñetas que te destrozan el corazon. Esta historia es muy dolorosa, y sinceramente felicito a la autora por regalarnos tanto talento, tanto sentimiento, tanta lucha, y a su vez el mensaje de esperanza y lo importante de buscar ayuda profesional siempre que se pueda.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book.

Emma seeks therapy to get approved for HRT (hormone replacement therapy) in order to transition to living as a woman full time. (The fact that people have to do this at all is oppressive gatekeeping.) In therapy, it becomes apparent that she has Dissociative Identity Disorder, or in other words she has multiple personalities.

Unfortunately her therapist, despite being trans himself, is a piece of shit and denies her HRT referral. He accuses her of lying, argues with her, loses his temper, etc. This book is largely about this shitty relationship. We meet Emma's alters, Katina and Ed, learn a bit about her childhood, and see how the personalities interact with each other (or don't).

I found myself wondering why Emma keeps going back to this shitty therapist. Perhaps, as an abuse survivor, she's used to being treated badly and did not understand what it's like to get actual competent help. She does eventually find a competent therapist and starts to heal.

It's important for people to acknowledge that therapy can be actively harmful sometimes. Good therapy can be vital but bad therapy can be destructive.

This book contains discussion of child abuse.

[Eva B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing short of fascinating. I read this one mostly to learn more about DID for my own writing since it's so often misrepresented in media, and came away from it in awe of Emma Grove's emotional honesty and sheer bravery to write this all down.

[Vanessa (V.C.) · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a really hard review to give: while I appreciate the scope of Emma's graphic memoir, I really don't care for her art style. The thick lines and black-and-white illustrations aren't aesthetically easy on the eye for me, and the same eight-panel grid page-after-page were redundant and made you feel as if you were reading the same page over and over again, for over 900 pages. It's also 900 pages of the same repetitive dialogue/conversations/therapy sessions with many therapists but mostly with one terrible therapist who takes up most of Emma's story and most of the reader's time. The whole memoir is really just about her therapy sessions, and the depth of those therapy sessions was just characters echoing and parroting what each other just said while covering the same ground that was covered dozens of times before. Very quickly, I realized that this was done on purpose as a personification of Emma's psyche through these terrible circumstances, and I understand that it was realistic, you do have to cover the same ground over and over again with each new therapist, but reading about it over and over again, it was all too much. Emma's life outside of the therapy sessions were way more interesting and engaging to read about than the therapy sessions that dominate 90% of the book. It wasn't enjoyable. Most graphic novels tend to be too short, but this book was the complete opposite, even with extremely brief texts, it was just too damn long and felt like it would never end. The book was so thick and heavy that it was hard to hold and even more physically difficult to read. Because of how gargantuan it is, it was really hard to finish and ultimately, there was no payoff to it all. The Third Person was a slog and a chore that had virtually no plot and again, it was repetition, after repetition, after repetition, to the point where you'd wanna scream. Just because that's the point doesn't mean it actually works. It just didn't work. The whole book was just Emma and her therapist talking. A LOT. And Emma in general talking, endlessly. All that the characters do is sit around or stand around and talk. No other action is done in this novel, it's just only talking. It was so boring. I WAS SO BORED. And to be honest, it was annoying, IT WAS REALLY ANNOYING. I'm not saying that The Third Person has no merit whatsoever. It was an important story to tell and I'm sure other transfems might relate to it better than I did, but it really just wasn't for me.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a story you want to carve out time for, to read in one go, because once you begin, you need to know that this beautiful troubled soul will survive, will find a way through the tangled forest of trauma, identity, and authenticity.

It's vital to read the short intro, in which the author explains that the story is real, a memoir of becoming, and how the process may seem a bit repetitive at times, but it's always the truth.

[Hannah Garden]

Veeeeeeeery interesting addition to the library of graphic memoir. I slammed through this like watching a cartoon—which makes sense because the book could be a big storyboard of animation cells instead of a book—only getting slowed down by l how much I hated Toby, and how angry I was that he talked to Emma/Katina/Ed the way he did. Therapists amiright.

Hell of a book.

[james]

honestly, what an exhausting reading process, i just can't do it, dnf @41%

[MariNaomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's a incredible feat to create an almost-thousand-page book that is impossible to put down. i was riveted and fascinated, and have a few choice words for @!%$& toby....

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing on their website that my library had recently acquired it, I put a hold on The Third Person, not knowing anything about it other than that it was a graphic memoir and had been tagged as LGBT.

After reading (and loving) Gender Queer earlier this year, that made it an insta-reserve for me. Imagine my surprise upon checking it out and realising that it’s been blurbed by Maia Kobabe eirself! Imagine my surprise also when I picked it up, literally, and realised it was an almost-1000 page behemoth of a graphic novel. I was a little intimidated - that is, until I started and finished reading it in two sittings, reluctantly interrupted only by work/sleep.

The Third Person does so much. It’s a memoir; it’s an exploration of mental illness and, specifically, dissociative identity disorder (D.I.D., formerly known as multiple personality disorder), and what that actually looks like. It’s about the barriers that exist between trans individuals and life-saving, gender affirming and mental health care.

It’s both general and specific. Emma’s story is so uniquely her own, and yet she canvasses such a swathe of experiences, it’s hard not to relate. Who hasn’t been involved in an unhealthy or even toxic relationship? Had a bad therapist? Felt shame about their past, or about parts of themselves?

It’s also incredibly raw. I can understand why it isn’t for everyone; at times, I felt so tense reading it, it was like I had a physical weight on my chest. At others, it’s almost painfully repetitive, but intentionally so. The repetition emulates the therapeutic process, and Emma’s fraught relationship with her therapist, Toby, spans hundreds of pages for a reason. Personally, I found it impressive that Emma was able not only to recall so much of their exchanges, but also to draw them in a way that remained compelling, even when the setting, and therefore the basic structure of each page, down to the individual panels, was the same.

Some parts are confusing. Again, I felt that this was intentional, and if not intentional, then at least thematically consistent. In the beginning, I wondered why colour or some other visual cue wasn’t used to distinguish between various alters. For example, Emma wears wigs: why not assign each alter a different wig, to make them easily identifiable?

The trouble with this approach is that, even to Emma, her alters are not easily identifiable. It was only after years of therapy, research, reflection, and work that she was able to produce this memoir at all. Creating cut-and-dry characters would have done nothing to communicate the intense confusion she must have felt after years of dissociation and memory loss.

With this book, Grove has replicated the fragmentation she experienced for so many years in a powerful, unforgettable reading experience. As a result, I have closed the pages on The Third Person with a much deeper understanding of D.I.D. than I ever had before.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost, the courage it took for Emma Grove to publish this memoir is astonishing. The Third Person is not an easy read and as Emma states in the Author’s Note at the beginning, the dialogue has not been invented for point of view, only edited for length when repetition was involved. That said, the line drawn depictions of the different characters are a substantial component of the reader’s experience so take your time when reading the text to also look closely at the facial and body expressions. During the course of the story each layer is slowly peeled away like those in an onion to unravel the trauma underneath that has caused the three people we see on the therapist’s couch: Ed, Emma and Katina who have come seeking approval to begin the process of transitioning to a woman permanently. The Third Person is not to be missed and Emma Grove, I truly hope the process of writing and drawing this story has brought you some peace.

Thank you to NetGalley and Drawn and Quarterly for providing an advanced copy for an honest and unbiased review.

[Alastair · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a totally unique graphic novel: amazingly done, very readable, fascinating and shocking.

Most of it takes place in a room with a therapist: the conversations are confusing, at times hilarious, at times maddening, full of misunderstandings and poor communication — “what kind of therapy was this?!” It was more like a six-month-long argument with a therapist who is in over his head with a client who is sometimes Ed, sometimes Emma, sometimes Katina.

The author’s brutally honest representation of her own disassociation is astounding.

(also fascinating are the notes at the end about how she actually made the book)

[Emmy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book made me angry. Like, it actually made me really angry.

I thought I'd be picking up a fascinating tale of D.I.D./M.P.D., which was a topic I was obsessed with back in high school. But, instead, it's about 900 pages of the same roundabout conversations again and again and again....

But, what pissed me off so bad is the main character. And I know this is a memoir, so I'm saying that this real person pissed me off. Fine.

The central question is whether or not Edgar, Emma, and Katina are actually the same person or multiple personalities. But, instead of being a juicy story, we have pages upon pages (and chapters upon chapters) of Emma clearly lying, and playing dumb when her therapist, Toby, calls her out on it.

The part that finally did it for me came after a couple of chapters of Toby saying that he couldn't allow Emma to go through gender transition yet, because he thinks there's something more going on. Maybe she's not lying to him, but she has some sort of trauma that she needs to work through. Emma admits that Katina might be an alternate personality and that she has blackouts from disosiating, but when Katina comes out, she instantly denies all this, even after she talks about Emma as a separate person. Then, the three personalities (Ed, Emma, and Katina) decide to write a letter to Toby, convinced that he's mad, not because she's lying, but because he "doesn't see her as a woman".

I don't believe that Emma is that naive. I don't believe she's that stupid, either. I think that she's either making something up or she's purposely trying to muddy the waters to avoid talking about difficult conversations.

As for the personalities, I don't believe there's more than one. And I don't believe that Katina is the "gatekeeper". I think you have Ed, who sincerely wants to transition. Katina is hyper-feminine because Ed is compensating, not feeling feminine enough. Emma is what Ed wants to be, but feels that he can't or that he's not quite there yet, so he relies on a persona he created that's more bold, more outgoing, and more feminine in order to make himself feel better. Emma is who he really wants to be, though, if only she were a little more assertive.

I was about 45% in when I finally rage quit. This book is so slow, so long, and so aggravating that I just couldn't finish it. Which is a pity, since I was really looking forward to it.

[sparklemaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a TRIP. A fascinating and excruciatingly vulnerable look inside the mind and life of a system -- a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder -- who is also a trans woman (yes, all of her "selves") desperately seeking gender affirming medical care. This book is so big there's space on the spine for an entire three panel strip, but it's a fast, engaging read rendered in very simple, highly emotive 2x4 panel blocks, and I read it voraciously, cover to cover, in a single day. I'm so grateful Emma (and Katina, and Ed) was able to survive and share her story with the world -- there is so much raw humanity in it, even though it is such a (statistically) unusual perspective, that you can't help but admire Emma's unflagging hope, Katina's fiery grit, and Ed's stolid perseverance.

[Marz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Love the art style. I felt all the lying accusations from the therapist could've been condensed-- it got quite frustrating and repetitive at times. Overall though, a great read that I'm thankful the author was able to create.

[Juniper · Rating 5 out of 5]

holy fucking shit

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was really sad. How even a trans therapist can be so violently disbelieving and horrible to someone as vulnerable and willing to grow as Emma. I'm glad she had the ability to get away from him.

I was weirdly under the impression throughout the book that we were meant to like him, but I think that came as the manipulative aspect of his work. He would kick her out, saying he couldn't help her, then call her or answer her calls back and say, "we can meet one last time, but only if you do this." I kept hoping, despite everything horrible, that he would help her. And when he didn't, I was relieved that she moved away from him and to another therapist. It felt cyclic in a sickly way. How her grandfather had hit her and abused her, and how this new man and therapist in her life verbally abused her too.

It's a hard book to read, but it went by fast. I felt like it was a beautiful memoir. Repetitive in an important and meaningful way, and focusing on one aspect of Emma's life, not needing to show everything because there was enough said to fill the book and answer any questions we as readers may have had.

[Lisa]

A fascinating work that, while difficult at times, was worth reading. There are times where the therapy process felt recursive or regressive, and it could be hard to get through (I say as a reader; I can't imagine the frustration and other feelings of the people involved), but I thought it was important for the storytelling. I enjoyed the artwork and especially the facial expressions. Reading this in parallel with Our Little Secret made me reflect on the systemic burdens that people face after abuse and trauma, on top of those experiences themselves.

[Chris Zable · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating memoir by a trans cartoonist about her experiences getting to the bottom of her dissociative identity disorder.

[Allison Janicki · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was an absolute SLOG to get through. i get the intention of the repetition to show how tedious everything was, but there is a way to do that without writing every single sentence that ever happened

[Addie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will probably be one of my favorite books from the year. So so incredible

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juste waouh.

[Nadia]

Reading this book was a visceral, emotional experience, and I would like very much to give Emma a very large hug and not let go until she feels it in her bones. If you begin this journey, please do not set it aside. Throw it across the room, by all means, but pick it back up again. And again. And again.

[Emi Chiba · Rating 2 out of 5]

What’s so compelling about graphic memoirs are their ability to show us pieces of the past and present and explain in a way words can’t. So to spend 900 pages of panels of two people, sitting in a therapists office, talking, is quite frankly so boring and a seriously missed opportunity with the medium. I almost didn’t finish it was so boring but I wanted to see how the story ended.

Toby sucks. Toby sucks so much as a therapist. Period. I hate Toby. I question his professional credentials to continue to treat her even when he knew he was not qualified.

Emma was a really interesting character and this book had so much potential, but the execution was seriously lacking. I’m glad the author was able to reconstruct the sessions with Toby via drawing. I don’t know that they needed to be published, however. This would’ve been a knock out if it had been 100 pages max, with some serious editing. As others have pointed out much of the book lacked any discernible plot, and even the few episodes we got of the past were mostly explained rather than drawn. Again such a missed opportunity with the medium of a graphic memoir. There was no need for this to be 900 pages. Such a shame because it’s a fascinating story, unfortunately we didn’t get much of it.

[Alexandra& · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved and deeply related to this book in a lot of ways, as another trans woman with DID. I don't get to hear stories from our small group often.

The simple art style works to the book's benefit, and despite being nearly 1000 pages, it was a quick read (graphic novels often are). The story overall is very interesting and told in an interesting way.

It's at some points a difficult and frustrating read. I understood the desire for complete accuracy as remembered, but some things maybe should have been trimmed for repetition. It very much does get across how frustrating it must have been in reality though, to have these same conversations over and over again, being denied HRT, being accused of faking despite the fact that he was denying HRT on the grounds that you really had DID.

I'm glad this book exists, and I'll almost certainly end up reading it again at some point.