Reviews with content warning for Violence - Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation

I hadn’t seen Nanette when I picked this book up, I was just interested in the story of a late-diagnosed autistic woman. I have since seen Nanette and there’s a ton of overlap, obviously, because this book is about the lead-up to that stand up special that was the talk of the town a few years ago. Gadsby goes year by year through a good chunk of her childhood and young adulthood, ending with the lead up to and performance of Nanette. It features many kinds of trauma so look up its trigger warnings but I loved the way she explained what she was going into detail about and what she wasn’t (I love a boundary.) Like myself, Gadsby has a lot of sensory sensitivities and hearing her say wearing a locket was “like getting strangled by a sharp hair all day,” I felt like she lived in my brain. I’ve always had a “weird way of explaining things,” but it isn’t my communication that’s different, it’s my experience of the thing! So cool. Anyway, I think there is plenty of room in comedy for real, not-funny things and Nanette is probably my favorite standup I’ve ever seen… but I may be biased because we experience the world so similarly. And that feels so cool after a lifetime of feeling different 🥰 five taters! 🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔/🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔

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