Pageboy: A Memoir: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

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For the most part, the prose is always at least competent, and ofttimes quite stirring; at other times, he reaches for something more poetic or flowery, and it lands with a clunk. But again, the story he wanted to tell is heartbreaking, and his anguish at coming to terms with his true self and owning that is both inspiring and admirable. I learned a lot about the trans experience I was not aware of, and if that's not worth 4 stars, I don't know what is... I felt like a huge weight lifted, immediately, like overnight, because that really was just so challenging and insufferable, being as closeted as I was, and for as long as I was. I didn't come out till I was 27. But that wasn't the end of the story. In a lighter way, I also love all the celebrity stuff. I love hearing about the cast of Whip It and going to parties at Drew Barrymore's house, and having Alia Shawkat trying to set him up with somebody, and all that sort of stuff is really fun to get a little peek inside of. You get that out of a celebrity memoir every time, and it's nice that we get both that and the heavy, big-capital-G gender stuff in this one.

I would pass a giant photograph of her, the poster for her latest film. Her beauty is dangerous, I'd think, it'll cause a car crash," he writes. Mel: I'm biased toward the queer and trans content in it, but I think towards the end he goes out to a cabin in Nova Scotia and is really kind of grappling with the momentousness of coming out as trans and what it's going to mean for him and his life, and how he does just have to do it. He talks about writing this book and writing sections of this book sitting in his favorite chair at the cabin in Nova Scotia. I like to see a little bit inside the process of the book. I think that's very fun. As she walked off I did what I could to prevent tears from ruining the makeup." Trouble on the set of 'Flatliners' Join Book Club: Delivered to your inbox every Friday, a selection of publishing news, literary observations, poetry recommendations and more from Book World writer Ron Charles. Sign up for the newsletter. I think this is a valuable book and hope that it will help people have empathy and more understanding for trans and queer people and maybe for themselves for whoever they are and whatever they’re going through.I don't know why I didn't demand he leave, ask for people to do more than "Yo, leave her alone." Some of my closest friends were there, witnessing it. Power works in funny ways. He was, and still is, one of the most famous actors in the world. pg. 66 This book will be released in a month, exactly, and I'm counting the days to read it. I can't wait! Elamin: When you say "stream of consciousness," is there a narrative arc still to the book, or not so much?

Elamin: Mel, I appreciate you reading the book. I appreciate you connecting with it, but also being here to share the ways that you connected with it. Thank you so much for your time. 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.You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts . This is a well written and at times poetic book. The descriptions of people, places, relationships, and to himself are vivid and well said. Probably the most surprising thing about this memoir is how well-written it is. I read a lot of memoirs, celebrity and otherwise, and many people have something to say. However, just because you have something to say does not mean you can write. This memoir was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I thought some of his writing on a sentence level was really great but the unchronological and disconnected vignette style got a little repetitive about half way through, and I think that's because a lot of the chapters are rehashing truly terrible homophobic shit that happened to them (tbh, that stuff was hard to read as a queer person!) but without any introspection or value added to what was otherwise a retelling of a horrible event. Because there (deliberately) isn't an overall narrative arc, I think the individual pieces needed something to elevate and add significance to them, and more often than not they didn't have that.

The thought of confronting him, setting any boundary at all, made me feel like I was going to shit blood. pg. 155 Like listening to a friend ... Now is an excellent time to read this humanizing and well-written memoir’ Associated PressI experienced it a bit like when I made an X-Men movie when I was 18 and it premiered at Cannes. ... I remember just being in this very tight, gold dress and my publicist at the time, like the face just brightening up and people just going on and on about how you look, like you'd accomplished this feat, like I'd [been] given a reward for, like donning what felt like a costume for me, essentially. But it wasn't until Juno where that was just taken to a whole new level and intensely pressured to dress a certain way and act a certain way and not be seen with my girlfriend.