Quick Take
- Narration: Allen’s self-narration is intimate to the point of feeling like a private recording, which suits the form perfectly given that this is a single-sitting essay rather than a produced audiobook.
- Themes: finding love during transition, the Mormon upbringing and its long shadow, being an unfinished person who loves anyway
- Mood: Quiet and confessional, warm in its brevity
- Verdict: A short essay that does what it promises in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. Don’t expect a full memoir; expect a single, well-told story.
Love and Estrogen arrived on my listening queue during the gap between two longer audiobooks, the kind of narrow slot where something under ninety minutes feels like exactly the right fit. At one hour and eighteen minutes, this is a single-sitting essay, part of The Real Thing collection of pieces about modern love, and it knows precisely what it is. Samantha Allen is not trying to write She’s Not There here. She’s trying to tell one small, true story about meeting someone in an elevator, and she does that with uncommon grace.
Allen describes herself at twenty-six as “unfinished”: carrying decades of emotional weight from growing up in a Mormon family, dealing with gender dysphoria midway through transition, feeling like an “awkward shape-shifter” when she met Corey. The meet-cute is as simple as meet-cutes get: an elevator, a hello, a chance taken. What Allen does with that simplicity is the work of the essay. She uses the ordinariness of the romantic encounter as a way to examine what it means to let someone see you clearly when you’re not yet sure who you’re becoming.
The Essay Form and Its Particular Demands
There’s a specific risk in the personal essay when it’s translated to audio, particularly when the author narrates. The form rewards concision, and concision in writing can feel rushed or thin when read aloud. Allen avoids this because she understands audio pacing. One listener described it as rewarding headphones and a quiet place, noting that “an intimate reading such as this rewards the listener with nuanced audible cues of every warmth” in the story. That’s the right framing: this is an essay optimized for close listening, not skimming.
The brevity is not a limitation. Allen has published journalism and criticism that required much longer forms, and the choice to tell this particular story in under ninety minutes is a deliberate and confident one. The Mormon background, which shapes so much of who she was when she met Corey, is handled in compressed but specific terms. It’s present as pressure, as inherited shame that sits inside a twenty-six-year-old who has been carrying it for what feels like longer than twenty-six years. You don’t need the full memoir to feel that weight, because Allen knows how much detail to include and how much to trust the listener to complete.
What Falls Outside the Frame
The essay is deliberately narrow in focus. One reviewer who appreciated it noted it as a “coming out love story” but wanted more from certain sections, including a moment after surgery that is described briefly and movingly: “the part where Samantha wakes up after surgery, with silence in her head.” That observation points to something real about the experience of listening to Love and Estrogen: the moments that feel most significant often arrive and pass quickly, because the form demands it. Whether that’s a flaw or a feature depends on what you want from this ninety-minute experience.
If you want a sustained exploration of what transition feels like from the inside, Allen’s journalism and longer-form writing will serve you better. If you want a single story, beautifully told, about what it means to be imperfect and unfinished and loved anyway, this audiobook delivers exactly that.
The Real Thing Collection as Context
Love and Estrogen is the fourth entry in The Real Thing series, a collection of essays on modern love illustrated by Geoff Mcfetridge. The conceit of the series is that each piece can be read or listened to in a single sitting, and the commissioning of writers to work within that constraint has resulted in a collection of pieces that are notably more focused than most contemporary personal essays. Allen’s contribution fits the ethos exactly. It’s not trying to be larger than its form allows, which is a discipline that serves both the series and the subject.
Who This Is For
Listeners who want a full memoir about gender transition, Mormon family dynamics, or the specific experience of meeting someone mid-transition will want to look elsewhere. This essay is a single note, played clearly and well. But for listeners who appreciate the compression of the essay form, who want something that can be held in a single listening session, or who are new to Allen’s writing and want to understand what she does with personal material, Love and Estrogen is an excellent entry point. The narration is worth the hour regardless of any other consideration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Love and Estrogen a complete memoir or an excerpt from a larger work?
It’s a standalone essay, written specifically for The Real Thing collection. It’s not an excerpt and there is no longer companion book. Allen’s other writing exists separately and in different formats.
Does the audio edition include the Geoff Mcfetridge illustrations referenced in the series description?
No. The illustrations are specific to the print edition of the collection. The audio edition is a clean narration of the essay text, without visual elements.
At 78 minutes, is this audiobook worth purchasing or is it better accessed through an Audible subscription credit?
Given the short runtime, using a subscription credit or Audible Plus membership where available makes more financial sense than a standalone purchase for most listeners.
Is this essay focused primarily on Samantha Allen’s transition or on the relationship with Corey?
Both are inseparable in the essay’s logic. The transition is the context that makes the relationship meaningful, and the relationship is what gives the transition its emotional resolution. You can’t pull one thread without the other.
