Pageboy: A Memoir: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

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Like listening to a friend ... Now is an excellent time to read this humanizing and well-written memoir’ Associated Press

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."I still think this is a very important book and I would urge anybody to read it, regardless of your own sexual orientation or gender identity. Please retain Elliot’s experiences here, I beg of you.

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. As she walked off I did what I could to prevent tears from ruining the makeup." Trouble on the set of 'Flatliners' 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 .

He does a good job describing his gender dysphonia over the years from a very young age until well into his adulthood. I was both surprised and not surprised about his feelings of confusion and his levels of awareness. 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 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. 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. A personal aside: His smoking drove me crazy but tobacco smoking always drives me crazy. I hope that he no longer smokes or will stop. 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. 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. 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.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." —Alok Vaid-Menon 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. However, I've never felt like a male either, even in my tomboy days, so it's not something I relate to. For this reason I like to read about others' experiences who are transgender. I could not detect myself. I didn't transform into me - the me I knew I was - like the other boys did. I was desperate to wake up from this bad dream, my reflection making me increasingly ill. Closing my eyes I'd find the memories, the moments of euphoria, of witnessing myself, praying I'd find that again. pg. 144 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.

The thought of confronting him, setting any boundary at all, made me feel like I was going to shit blood. pg. 155 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. 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 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.I resent that we were cheated out of our love, that beautiful surge in the heart stolen from us. I am furious at the seeds planted without our consent, the voices and the actions that made our roads to the truth unnecessarily brutal. pg. 179 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. 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. 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.