Disappoint Me is a novel about relationships and growing up, as a thirty year old trans woman meets a new guy and navigates a more heteronormative life. Max works as a lawyer for a tech company, doing what their AI tool actually can’t, and after a New Year’s party ends with her falling down some stairs, she’s looking for more stability. She meets Vincent, a corporate lawyer who is sweet and caring, even if a lot of his life feels unlike Max’s. Looming is Max’s friend’s wedding, in which she’s a bridesmaid, but a health scare and a secret from Vincent’s past push that to the background, and Max must face up to what her future might actually hold.
Having loved Bellies, I was excited to read Dinan’s next book, and Disappoint Me has a lot of similarities, focusing on characters’ emotions and relationships, and navigating acting in ways that are or aren’t see as ‘normal’. In her second novel, Dinan focuses on ideas of where to go next, what happens after. The protagonist, Max, is thirty and watches as people suddenly start focusing on weddings and babies, or being obsessed with their jobs as an alternative. The book considers what kind of future there might be, especially for a heterosexual trans woman whose job doesn’t challenge her and whose future as a poet didn’t seem to go anywhere. There’s a sense of trying out a heteronormative life, with some hilarious touches like that her boyfriend Vincent loves bringing up that he’s read Detransition, Baby whenever talk turns to parenting, and this novel in general does feel like it follows on not only from Dinan’s debut but other talked-about trans literary fiction like Detransition, Baby, exploring a world in which cis straight people have also read these novels.
Given the title, I did start fearing partway through that Disappoint Me‘s ending was going to be too bleak, but actually it is more ambivalent and purposefully ambiguous, showing the difficulty in seeing anything as an ending when the world always keeps going regardless. There’s a lot of things that are thrown up in the novel and don’t really get resolved, but again, as the book is trying to capture the fact that life keeps going on, and what that means when you’re trying to work out your own life, this feels purposeful. The characters are messy, but as the ending tries to highlight, people aren’t perfect and you can still love people when they mess up, and part of getting older is realising this.
Fiendfully Reading 
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