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arockinsamsara 's review for:
Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation
by Hannah Gadsby
This is an absolutely stunning memoir. Every iteration of this review I have tried to write has gotten long-winded and off-track, so I am going to condense this into what I found most impressive and important about this memoir. Firstly, Gadsby’s comedic voice is very clear throughout the whole book. It was impossible not to hear Gadsby performing this as I read it, her performance cadence and presentation (at least, my impression of them from her two Netflix specials), have been masterfully adapted to the page. Secondly, she does an incredible job of bringing the reader into what the life experiences of a neurodivergent person are like, but not through explaining or speechifying, but simply showing. The way she is able to matter-of-factly explain how different sense experiences, or different environments, and so forth, have immediate and visceral effects on her, and how those are just givens that mediate her experiences of reality, allows the reader an interiority of experience that has the capacity to reorient an understanding of what it means to be in the world. Gadsby doesn’t ever make any claims to a universality of experience across the spectrum of neurodivergence, but instead she is incredibly specific about her experiences, and she does so centering her experiences instead of a diagnosis. It is one thing to be given a list of common characteristics of someone with ASD, but it is entirely different to be invited to follow their experiences starting from childhood, seeing how their understanding of and experience of the world shaped everything in profound ways that a diagnostic list can never do.
Gadsby manages to be hilarious, poignant, and gut punching all at the same time. She shares decades’ worth of context that was behind the hour-long performance of Nanette that most of us are familiar with, and it only serves to enrich her story and comedic bonafides while further cementing her as an incredible talent that is able to find the emotional center of an experience and then craft the narrative that shares that experience in such a way as for it to be most impactful, and simultaneously true to itself. By sharing her story in such an intimate and thoughtful way Gadsby has generously offered the opportunity to reconceptualize how we experience ourselves and other people, encouraging us to be kinder, better versions of ourselves.
I want to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group--Ballantine Book, who provided a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Gadsby manages to be hilarious, poignant, and gut punching all at the same time. She shares decades’ worth of context that was behind the hour-long performance of Nanette that most of us are familiar with, and it only serves to enrich her story and comedic bonafides while further cementing her as an incredible talent that is able to find the emotional center of an experience and then craft the narrative that shares that experience in such a way as for it to be most impactful, and simultaneously true to itself. By sharing her story in such an intimate and thoughtful way Gadsby has generously offered the opportunity to reconceptualize how we experience ourselves and other people, encouraging us to be kinder, better versions of ourselves.
I want to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group--Ballantine Book, who provided a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.