
What It Feels Like for a Girl (Hardback)
Paris Lees (author)Published: 27/05/2021

Journalist and presenter Paris Lees delivers an incredibly accomplished memoir of a youth in a dead-end town in the East Midlands, written in an evocative vernacular style and boasting a cast of finely-drawn, memorable characters.
Thirteen-year-old Byron needs to get away, and doesn't care how. Sick of being beaten up by lads for 'talkin' like a poof' after school. Sick of dad - the weightlifting, womanising Gaz - and Mam, who selfishly pissed off to Turkey like Shirley Valentine. Sick of the people who shuffle about Hucknall like the living dead, going on about kitchens they're too skint to do up and marriages they're too scared to leave.
It's a new millennium, Madonna's 'Music' is top of the charts and there's a whole world to explore - and Byron's happy to beg, steal and skank onto a rollercoaster ride of hedonism. Life explodes like a rush of ecstasy when Byron discovers the Fallen Divas Project and the East Midlands' premier podium-dancer-cum-hellraiser, the mesmerising Lady Die. But when the comedown finally kicks in, Byron arrives at a shocking encounter that will change life forever.
Unflinching, hilarious and heart-breaking, What It Feels Like For a Girl is the unique, hotly-anticipated and addictively-readable debut from one of Britain's most exciting young writers.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241450123
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 392 g
Dimensions: 222 x 144 x 27 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Devastating, hilarious, unlike anything I have ever read. Destined to be a classic' - Pandora Sykes
'Fresh, original, heartbreaking and optimistic. The subtlety of time passing reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's writing.' - Reni Eddo Lodge
'Paris Lees is the voice of a generation.' - Paul Flynn
'Brilliant, brutal and bitingly funny, Lees is going to rip your heart out and show you the ugly truth about kids Britain would rather pretend don't exist. There's never been a book like this.' - Matthew Todd
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Possibly one of the most fresh, original and surprising reads in a while.
I got so wrapped in the story, I forgot it was a memoir and then it surprised me even more.
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“An incredibly immersive memoir”
Thanks to Particular Books for gifting me What It Feels Like For A Girl by Paris Lees. This is a memoir, but a very unconventional one: written with the immediacy and perspective of a novel, it reads very much like a... More
“⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️”
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