The Reluctant Man: How fighting transgender for 60 years influenced my life

This is A.C. Llewellyn’s life story from age 4 to age 74. It is a memoir, with many layers. It is of the warts and all type, with no one getting off scot free or even lightly. Originally released in 2012 as Loki’s Joke under the pseudonym Penny Blackwell, this is a revised, re-titled and expanded edition released in the author’s own name.

Why? Because in the intervening years the author had an epiphany: that hiding behind ‘The Secret’ meant that she was still a prisoner of circumstance. Revising the original manuscript and releasing it under her own name has delivered unexpected freedom and energy.

The book is not entirely about the transsexual or transgender experience but still that experience pervades it because it informs the author’s personality and actions. There’s the running from one country to another, the hesitation to commit to marriage, and the odd behaviour of simultaneously running a love affair with a woman while taking pills that cause a hormonal shift towards womanhood.

If you thought that being transgender was a choice, think again. No-one would choose to live under a shadow such as this.