Scan barcode
A review by wendoxford
What It Feels Like for a Girl by Paris Lees
1.0
I hate a book in dialect. I found it unnecessarily hard work and would have stopped reading after the first pages except it was a book group read.
The USP of this memoir is the drilling down into the situation of Byron becoming Paris, a young trans story. For me, this really didn't hugely differ (in content) from Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Poverty, abuse, addiction and being your own person. That said, I really disliked both of those books as well. However this has the added extra of Nottinghamshire patois.
There is nothing in this book that gave me any understanding of the trans experience. It somehow seems to dodge the danger elements of prostitution and was all presented as a bit of a lark. The implicit narrative was the blatant grooming to which Lees was subjected to by older men but this is given as much attention as a bus journey. Her part in a crime, conviction and prison sentence are so light touch that they could have been excluded. Surely this is an open door to explain how it feels being a woman in a man's body.
If (and that's a big if, from me) this seemed at some stage, to be a publishable memoir, surely an editor should have suggested some reflection on these endlessly damaging experiences and dysfunctional parenting. Instead we are bombarded with it being the froth of youth and not as bad as the murkier depths of the story indicate.
Truly dreadful
The USP of this memoir is the drilling down into the situation of Byron becoming Paris, a young trans story. For me, this really didn't hugely differ (in content) from Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Poverty, abuse, addiction and being your own person. That said, I really disliked both of those books as well. However this has the added extra of Nottinghamshire patois.
There is nothing in this book that gave me any understanding of the trans experience. It somehow seems to dodge the danger elements of prostitution and was all presented as a bit of a lark. The implicit narrative was the blatant grooming to which Lees was subjected to by older men but this is given as much attention as a bus journey. Her part in a crime, conviction and prison sentence are so light touch that they could have been excluded. Surely this is an open door to explain how it feels being a woman in a man's body.
If (and that's a big if, from me) this seemed at some stage, to be a publishable memoir, surely an editor should have suggested some reflection on these endlessly damaging experiences and dysfunctional parenting. Instead we are bombarded with it being the froth of youth and not as bad as the murkier depths of the story indicate.
Truly dreadful