Love Child

Kit’s mother has just embarked on an affair with Ajax, her husband’s secretary. Kit is murderously jealous, but of whom, mother or Ajax? And what gender is Ajax, or Kit for that matter? It is impossible to tell. Why is the reader uncomfortable not knowing? Whether boy or girl, it is clear that Kit is a monster: a mini-adult whose freakishly sophisticated brain knows ‘everything’ and whose stunted emotions know nothing. The combination is, inevitably, disastrous…

Love Child, Maureen Duffy’s teasingly brilliant exploration of the meaning of gender, was first published in 1971.