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Her Name Is Alice
- Author
- Caroline Litman
- Narrator
- Caroline Litman
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 13 March 2025
- Run Time
- 11 hours 9 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Memoirs, Gender studies: ‘trans’, transgender people and gender variance, True stories of survival of abuse and injustice, Sociology: death and dying, Suicide: Coping with / advice about suicidal thoughts and suicide of others, LGBTQIA+ topics: coming out, Medical and healthcare law, Mental health services, Teenagers: advice for parents
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
What to expect
'Thoughtful, beautiful, incredibly necessary. People need to read this book, especially if they feel a resistance to. I wish everyone would.' Sofie Hagen
‘Uncompromising, anguished, combative: culture wars have victims, and this is an agonising story told with honesty and passion.’ Richard Beard
'An intimate, beautifully told memoir' Elinor Cleghorn
When my third child was born, I was told I had a boy. The baby was given a boy’s name and raised in that gender. But when she died, twenty years later, she died as my daughter, and will forever be remembered that way.
Alice Litman died by suicide in May 2022, aged just twenty years old, having already waited almost three years for her first appointment at a gender identity clinic.
In stunningly beautiful prose, Caroline Litman captures the realities of an often-messy journey navigating both her daughter’s transition and the days, weeks and months after Alice’s death.
Searing, urgent and utterly unique, Her Name is Alice is the raw, human story of a mother’s love and grief for her child – and of a young trans woman who is impossible to forget and who must be remembered.
Critics Review
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'An inspirational mother, story and book' Ella Morgan
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'A mother-daughter love story about fighting a world stacked against you. Brilliant and super relevant.' India Willoughby
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‘A tragic, defiant story beautifully and deftly told. A timely reminder that the victims of the relentless culture wars are real people with real lives who love each other with unimaginable intensity. Life's complicated, and we do it a disservice to reduce it to cheap soundbites. Caroline's elegy illustrates this perfectly.’ Paul Sinha
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'An urgent, powerful call for people to be trusted, supported and cared for – in their gender identities, and as themselves. With searing honesty, Litman reveals the damage done to people and their loved ones when uninformed hostility subsumes understanding, and kindness.' Elinor Cleghorn
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'It feels inadequate to say how brave she is, in the living of the experience and then the honest, raw recounting of it. Her voice is as clear as a bell and she shares a powerful insight into a system so ineffective and broken it feels pointless. Breathtakingly awful and compelling with glimmers of hope in the conclusion.' Lucy Brazier
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'Heart-breaking – also incredibly important. By telling frankly the story of her daughter's life, Caroline shines an unyielding, necessary light on the devastating impact of transphobia, and the urgent need for broader understanding of the emotional reality of trans lives.' John McCullough
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'An intimate reflection on a mother-daughter relationship that is frank and heartbreaking. Caroline bravely shares how her own prejudice towards transgender people impacted how she treated Alice when she came out, showing us that it is possible for people to change their views. While the NHS trans healthcare system is moving in the wrong direction to prevent further tragedies like Alice's death, we can still hope that this book helps other parents to love their trans kids as fiercely as Caroline loves Alice.' Vic Parsons
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
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5.0 5.0
I listened to the audiobook version narrated by the author. It’s visceral grief of a mother losing their child, of regret and doubt and above all rage at the lack of medical support, despite her mother being trained as a psychiatrist.
A stand out extract for me was Alice’s godmother describing Alice as a sexual pervert even though she knew that wasn’t true. A damning indictment of the influence of social media and its corrosive polarisation of opinions.
The book is well written and excellently narrated. Highly recommended.VRS 2025-05-31
Details
- Author
- Caroline Litman
- Narrator
- Caroline Litman
- Duration
- 11 hours 9 minutes
- Release Date
- 13 March 2025
- ISBN
- 9780008667955
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Memoirs, Gender studies: ‘trans’, transgender people and gender variance, True stories of survival of abuse and injustice, Sociology: death and dying, Suicide: Coping with / advice about suicidal thoughts and suicide of others, LGBTQIA+ topics: coming out, Medical and healthcare law, Mental health services, Teenagers: advice for parents
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 5.0(1 review)
Synopsis
'Thoughtful, beautiful, incredibly necessary. People need to read this book, especially if they feel a resistance to. I wish everyone would.' Sofie Hagen ‘Uncompromising, anguished, combative: culture wars have victims, and this is an agonising story told with honesty and passion.’ Richard Beard 'An intimate, beautifully told memoir' Elinor Cleghorn When my third child was born, I was told I had a boy. The baby was given a boy’s name and raised in that gender. But when she died, twenty years later, she died as my daughter, and will forever be remembered that way. Alice Litman died by suicide in May 2022, aged just twenty years old, having already waited almost three years for her first appointment at a gender identity clinic. In stunningly beautiful prose, Caroline Litman captures the realities of an often-messy journey navigating both her daughter’s transition and the days, weeks and months after Alice’s death. Searing, urgent and utterly unique, Her Name is Alice is the raw, human story of a mother’s love and grief for her child – and of a young trans woman who is impossible to forget and who must be remembered.
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