What It Feels Like for a Girl

I didn't know who Paris Lees was when I started this book but I looked her up on the internet and she is a very interesting and eloquent individual. This is a fascinating book which covers her teenage years and goes some way to explaining how she ended up where she is today. It has to be said that her life could have gone one of two ways but thankfully she had the strength of character and the intelligence to come out on the right side.

Paris Lees is a renowned journalist, campaigner and presenter as well as being the first trans columnist in Vogue and the first trans woman to present shows on both Radio 1 and Channel 4. This is the story of her teenage years, written in the first person as a memoir, but using the voice of a teenage boy called Byron. From a somewhat challenging family background in Hucknall, Byron was on a journey of self-discovery like no other, which could have ended in disaster but, as can be seen from Paris’s current credentials, really turned out rather well for her – miraculous though that may seem. This memoir is a no holds barred rollercoaster of a ride, brutally honest, bold and unforgettable.

This was a very unique and a very unusual book, but a great one. As memoirs go it is certainly candid but is also very lucid, despite the chaos which surrounded Byron’s teenage life. The writing style is very engaging and, despite concerns about the book being written in the vernacular, I found that I “learnt” the language very quickly and had no problems with it. Byron is clearly a very intelligent individual, capable of both introspection and self-analysis as well as of expressing these thoughts to other people. Even when Byron was at his most wild, he never seemed to be completely out of control – there was always room for him to admit when he was wrong or when he’d messed up (a fairly frequent occurrence).
The book is populated by an array of wonderful characters, all of whom are described in great technicolour detail. Even Byron’s family members are colourful individuals, not necessary always likeable and definitely non-functional most of the time but interesting characters nonetheless.
One evening at Book Club we were discussing Educated by Tara Westover. We were talking about family expectations as far as education was concerned and I asked if people from the group had grown up in environments in which they were expected to go to University. One of the group looked at me as though I had lost my marbles and said “No, we were expected to go to prison”. She comes from the Midlands and grew up surrounded by a large extended family which sounded not dissimilar to that of Paris Lees’, complete with a guardian angel grandmother. This was about as far from my upbringing as it is possible to get and I found it fascinating to see how other people’s teenage years differed so dramatically from my very conservative upbringing. The concept of having the freedom to behave in the way that Byron did at such a young age was quite astonishing, to the point where I was almost envious.

I hope that this book will appeal to most people as it is well worth a read. I appreciate that some people may find the vernacular off-putting or the content offensive but I hope these are a small number of people as this book deserves to be read.

This book grabbed my attention from the first page. Being familiar with the area and accent made it easy to read a novel so completely in the vernacular. This style gave the memoir a true sense of time and place, and it felt like the reader was given a direct line into the writer’s perspective of the world. This book was outrageous and frequently funny, but incredibly sad in parts. A compulsive read.

Blimey what a read.
Being a Midlands girl I found reading the book in the Vernacular easy although I appreciate others may struggle, but saying that being written in the Nottingham dialect gives the reader a true sense of what Paris was experiencing and for me it totally was the correct way to present her story.
The book is about the journey of Paris lees younger self in a world of parental neglect and societies negative views on anyone who chooses to act / look diffently to the norm and growing up myself in a family very similar( very very similar) I could relate to those feeling and frustrations.
You get a sense of the hardship Paris experienced of being dragged up in a house where you are not cared for or wanted and without the grandmother being there for her, she really had no one who understand Paris for Paris.
Paris lived life to the maximum in a rather unconventional way but was most of the time in control of this life, but although it was quite frankly a extremely turbulent and harrowing one for somebody so young Paris remained a tower of strength throughout those years.
The book for me brought back memories of weekends in Birmingham and having to run the gauntlet each time to get there with the usual barrage of abuse being thrown because I choose not to fit in the box.
The book made me smile quite a few times including remembering the cartoon from the television called Duck Tales, the word Ablutions and the comment Paris said about Kidderminster...how very true.

Paris Lee has written a memoir that is funny and pathetic at once. It is a horrifying delve into the life of a 14 year old from a chaotic and abusive poverty ridden life. I think that it is a story that needs telling however I did not care for it not because of the story but because of the dialect in which it is written. I found it difficult to get into the flow of the language. For me it was a long, slow and boring read. The subject matter is important to understand and I feel disappointed in that I have to rate it so harshly. I simply could not recommend this book.