Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Pageboy

Title: Pageboy: A Memoir
Author: Elliot Page
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 4.25
Pub Date: June 6, 2023

T H R E E • W O R D S

Moving • Important • Fearless

📖 S Y N O P S I S

“Can I kiss you?” It was two months before the world premiere of Juno, and Elliot Page was in his first ever queer bar. The hot summer air hung heavy around him as he looked at her. And then it happened. In front of everyone. A previously unfathomable experience. Here he was on the precipice of discovering himself as a queer person, as a trans person. Getting closer to his desires, his dreams, himself, without the repression he’d carried for so long. But for Elliot, two steps forward had always come with one step back.

With Juno’s massive success, Elliot became one of the world’s most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare.

As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do, until enough was enough. Pageboy is the story of a life pushed to the brink. But at its core, it's a winding journey of what it means to untangle ourselves from the expectations of others is an ode to stepping into who we truly are with defiance, strength, and joy.

💭 T H O U G H T S

Pageboy was one of my most anticipated memoirs of 2023, so I was excited when I was able to score a copy on release day being first-in-line at my library. As a fellow Canadian, I've been an Elliot Page fan from his time in Juno and have been following his journey ever since.

While there have been many criticisms on the structure of this memoir, in my opinion, the writing style mirrors the journey - one step forward, two steps back. An ongoing journey. It's for this reason that the jumping around seemed intentional. I do typically prefer a linear cohesiveness, in this one I felt as though it worked as a literary tool.

He delves deep, giving the reader a full behind-the-scenes glance into the intimate details of his life - touching on sex, love, trauma and Hollywood. At times I felt it was more sexually vulgar than I'd been anticipating, but this is more a matter of personal preference than anything else.

It's obvious that Page has a love of books and I absolutely love how he details the ways in which books have helped him, and that it's his hope in penning his own story that it can help someone in their own journey. In my opinion, this is necessary reading for everyone. Page explains in his author's note, Pageboy is his story. How one person's story is one person's story, but this book will help expand a growing wealth of trans literature.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• memoir lovers
• everyone!

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"I’ve spent much of my life chipping away toward the truth, while terrified to cause a collapse."

"But the answer was in the silence, the answer would only come when I chose to listen."

Content Warnings