Pageboy: A Memoir

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The audiobook is a good one, though I do recommend speeding up the narration if you normally don't, as he speaks pretty slowly. I normally do audiobooks at between 1.1x and 1.25x speed, but I had this one higher. I think a lot more people need to listen to trans people, allow their voices to be heard and learn about their experiences more overall. There is too much hatred and vitriol out there in this world still. We can work together to help stamp it out, but as a society, we sadly still have a long way to go. Mel: Yeah, that quote comes from a section where it's a little bit before his coming out as gay in the mid-2010s and about how he's privately queer and living a very queer life, and then having to watch straight actors win awards for playing queer roles, and seeing how this industry has continued to repress his queerness, his gender, his expression, and the kind of double-sidedness of that and the hypocrisy of that. I think it's a really good way of summing up something that we talk a lot about — about queer and trans folks in entertainment, and how you watch people win an Oscar for playing gay while you yourself have to stay closeted. That's a really hard experience to go through. He's very well-read, often talking about books he's read, and it's obviously affected his writing for the better. I can't help but think the plethora of books he's read informed this book. He's fond of quoting Vonnegut. Elamin: When you say "stream of consciousness," is there a narrative arc still to the book, or not so much?

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 I think in so many ways I didn't know what to do. My reaction was just to sort of freeze up. And, from a certain age onward, it just became so consistent. ... I was under 19. ... It's baffling to me why anyone would want to treat anyone that way, particularly someone who is so young and in a vulnerable position and new to that world. ... It's obviously in every aspect of our society and it's really harmful. So many of us shove it away, don't talk about it, are told to just let it go, brush it off, you know? And that can be just so damaging and harmful and I think allows for individuals to keep getting away with their predatory and hurtful behavior.

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If the little man does throw a wobbly on the day, then bribing him with sweets, toys or other special treats is certainly an option to consider (but we didn’t tell you that!). As she walked off I did what I could to prevent tears from ruining the makeup." Trouble on the set of 'Flatliners' If you publish a book, even if it's your own personal journey and feelings and whatnot, I am going to judge it as any other book. If it's not written well, I'm going to say so.

There was a lot that was difficult here, I was surprised at how much. But I didn't find myself dwelling all that much on the traumas, I really enjoyed how unapologetically queer the book is and clung to that more than anything else. Like listening to a friend ... Now is an excellent time to read this humanizing and well-written memoir’ Associated Press Kate Mara’s pseudo open relationship with that guy from the handmaid’s tale was NOT tea that I expected from this book. 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.

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This both feels incredibly personal and yet incredibly removed. It's a very purposefully removed narrative voice, cold and crisp, as Elliot goes through details of past experiences, cruelty and otherwise. Some of these stories are incredibly personally, and there's something simultaneously painful and cathartic about reading them. As the book came towards its conclusion, I craved more of an intense emotional connection. It's a very inconclusive memoir, and I think that's on purpose. I wished for a conclusion, but understood this as an artistic choice. This is a well written and at times poetic book. The descriptions of people, places, relationships, and to himself are vivid and well said. I 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. Wearing swim trunks for the first time, chest out and with my scars visible, was indescribable," he writes and says that the smile on his face was "as massive as they come." A 'world-renowned photographer' treated him with malice Playing a character that was partially starved to death allowed me to lean in to my desire to disappear, to punish myself. ...

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. 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 . Searing, deeply moving, and incredibly poignant... This isn’t simply a book on what it means to be trans, it’s about what it means to be human."

Elliot Page

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. 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.

If I was growing up today, I would probably say I'm non-binary. I was assigned female at birth and, though I like to dress "feminine", I have never felt like a woman and resent having to be a woman with breasts, periods, and the fact that I can get pregnant. stars from me because narratively, it doesn’t flow as cohesively as it should when jumping from the past to the present day. It is his story to tell, and I respect Elliot immensely, but I would have rather read his experiences growing up more linear. I see a lot of others agreeing here. More editing to shuffle around these chapters would have really helped here. If this has been down, I easily could have rated it higher.

I'll prove to you all that I need nothing. The little voice would brag with a creak of a side smile. pg. 78