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Squirrel Cage
Softcover Cindi Jones chronicles her life as she banters with her squirrel muse. While her autobiography is about transsexualism, the story of love and struggle is universal. Cindi's compelling style is powerful as she pulls the reader in to her life walking the forbidden path alone. Her writing is fresh, inviting and engrossing. Join her as she details her sorrows and joys as she forges gold from lead, changing her gender in reassignment surgery, and culminating her story by leading a productive life as a woman. This is a story of love betrayed, brutal loss, and sweet victory.
225 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 14, 2014
I want to feel awful about the one-star rating, and yet...
This is by far one of the most poorly-written books I've ever read. Does it contain other elements that draw me into a book? Yes. It's emotional. I truly feel for Cindi and I can't begin to imagine how heavy the occurrences of this book weighed on her as she was living them.
However, it's hard to follow a story that needs editing as badly as a wilting plant needs water. The missing punctuation, including a mysterious and frequent disappearance of quotation marks during dialog, makes the book hard enough to read. My frustration grew when the author begins using the same word-for-word descriptions for the same things, on the same page. When reading a book, deja vu is never a good thing.
The final straw for me is when the author tells a story involving her sister, Charlotte, and her wife, Charlene. In the story of how the author met her wife back in high school, she describes everything she and Charlene did together, leading up to the day Cindi decides to go on a mission for the church. Right smack in the middle of the story, the author begins referring to her future wife as Charlotte (her sister's name in the story), and continues like this for a couple of pages before reverting back to Charlene. If you can't keep your characters in your own story straight, how am I to find anything else in your story genuine?
So, if I must be honest, I did not finish this book. It was too painful, and not in the way the author might have intended. Thus, it gets one star.
This is by far one of the most poorly-written books I've ever read. Does it contain other elements that draw me into a book? Yes. It's emotional. I truly feel for Cindi and I can't begin to imagine how heavy the occurrences of this book weighed on her as she was living them.
However, it's hard to follow a story that needs editing as badly as a wilting plant needs water. The missing punctuation, including a mysterious and frequent disappearance of quotation marks during dialog, makes the book hard enough to read. My frustration grew when the author begins using the same word-for-word descriptions for the same things, on the same page. When reading a book, deja vu is never a good thing.
The final straw for me is when the author tells a story involving her sister, Charlotte, and her wife, Charlene. In the story of how the author met her wife back in high school, she describes everything she and Charlene did together, leading up to the day Cindi decides to go on a mission for the church. Right smack in the middle of the story, the author begins referring to her future wife as Charlotte (her sister's name in the story), and continues like this for a couple of pages before reverting back to Charlene. If you can't keep your characters in your own story straight, how am I to find anything else in your story genuine?
So, if I must be honest, I did not finish this book. It was too painful, and not in the way the author might have intended. Thus, it gets one star.
January 18, 2016
A deeply personal and brutally honest look at gender dysphoria. If you've ever wondered how someone could yearn to change their genetic gender enough to expose themselves to all the social pressures, potential embarrassments and even violence acting on that urge to change can bring, here is a book by someone who has been through it and will pull no punches in chronicling the adventure. It's great reading and great insight into dealing with alternative lifestyles.
My only criticism of the book was that it could use better copy editing. For instance, there seemed to be a gap in the later part of the book where an emotionally exhausted Cindi jumps from determination to end transitioning and goes back home to reunite with an estranged family to being in her car heading straight back to California and gender reassignment surgery -- no explanation of what brought about crisis. There are also a few typos and stranded words where the sentence changed structure mid composition. The author mentions struggling with ADHD and dyslexia in school, afflictions I do not share while often making the same sorts of errors in my writing.
Nobody interested in the topic should let the above comment sway them from reading Squirrel Cage. There are no editing issues that make the book difficult to digest. Some are so subtle that my own brain would correct them on the fly and only a nagging sense that something was amiss would drag my eyes back to find the glitch. The book is worthy enough I hereby volunteer to edit it pro bono should Cindi Jones wish.
Read Squirrel Cage. As I did, I think that you'll enjoy it, you'll learn from it, and you'll expand your understanding of others locked in an inner struggle you may have never faced but as a human can completely empathize with.
March 2, 2014
I am not really sure why I started reading this other than it was a free ebook download and I was curious because I'm a Mormon. (It's the memoirs of a woman who was born a boy in a Mormon family.) Since he left the LDS faith and his family to become a woman, I knew this wouldn't be a read I totally agreed with, but I was interested in the journey. I ended up not completing it because I don't understand the author's thinking, don't feel like the story is benefiting me, and I'm tired of the typos. I should have expected as much and am a little sad I wasted my time reading as much as I did. It's just not for me and that's okay. While I do not pretend to understand transsexuals, I did find Cindi's empathy and honesty refreshing, though the parts about stealing and lying made her (him?) confusing. I really do not understand the whole squirrel thing. I guess it was a coping mechanism to give a name/voice to the vicious cycle of negative thoughts. But it does come across as somewhat schizophrenic. Anyway, I did not finish and do not plan to finish this book. I'm not sure I would recommend this unless you personally know the author (who wrote under a pseudo name anyway) as a way of understanding him/her.
April 28, 2015
I read a lot of Memoirs and just happened to read this one shortly after Bruce Jenner made his public appearance on national TV. My heart breaks that we live in a world where everyone is expected to conform and live by the rules and expectations of religion and society. We are not all round fitting in round holes. I felt truly saddened by David/Cindi's failed marriage and his wife's decision to isolate him from his children. I hope and pray that someday Cindi is reunited with her children so that she can have a relationship with them. I found this to be an interesting journey from the perspective of someone actually living a transsexual lifestyle. I can't even begin to imagine the hurt, humiliation, isolation and pain that anyone born with this issue goes through. Perhaps it wasn't written perfectly, but I saw through some of that and felt all of the suffering Cindi went through to become herself. I was grateful for each friend she met along the way that helped her deal with many of the issues.
July 11, 2016
I know of two transgender women, one of whom recommended me this book to enable me to better understand her gender dysphoria. This book is the true story of David; born male but self-identified as a female from a young age. It's an autobiography that takes the reader on the journey that David takes to present the person that he has always been on the inside; Cindi.
It is not always easy to read the heartbreak and struggles that Cindi has had to overcome to be true to herself but they are necessary struggles if she is to embrace life fully and with acceptance as a woman.
It is not always easy to read the heartbreak and struggles that Cindi has had to overcome to be true to herself but they are necessary struggles if she is to embrace life fully and with acceptance as a woman.
November 24, 2014
I enjoyed this book, although I felt it was rather disjointed and didn't move in a linear matter. This was obviously the author's choice, and she states that at the beginning of the book, however I didn't enjoy reading it in that way.
July 9, 2012
Numerous typos aside, this is a very powerful and moving story and is one of the most important books I've read in the last five years.
September 26, 2015
A good story of a transition... Some errors throughout...
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews