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Features

‘The future is wide open’: How trans literature came of age

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The UK’s best literary days out for bookworms and readers

Paris Lees

Fresh, original, heartbreaking and optimistic. The subtlety of time passing reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's writing.

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

Devastating one page, hilarious the next, What It Feels Like for a A Girl is unlike anything I have ever read. Utterly unique and imbued with hope - it is destined to be a classic.

A sensational, gut-wrenching read: raw, moving, and ultimately life-affirming

Often hilarious, sometimes moving, consistently engrossing, always authentic and ultimately uplifting. Reminiscent of Trainspotting and Irvine Welsh. A tour-de-force

A must-read ... as mesmerising as it is poignant

Stylist, SPRING MUST-READ BOOKS TO FEEL EMPOWERED

This utterly distinctive memoir, written almost out loud in Nottinghamshire vernacular, hauls you into the world Lees grew up in... it's shocking, funny, heart-rending and totally brilliant

The Bookseller, EDITOR’S CHOICE MAY 2021

What It Feels Like for a Girl says it like it is

A groundbreaking, peerless journey into trauma and the impossibility of fighting for the self

Paris Lees has created a totally complete world in the way that something like Trainspotting or Skins or It's A Sin did... made a universe, populated it with people that you absolutely care about, dialect that you're completely absorbed by, then smashed your heart to smithereens

Nothing is off-limits in this unputdownable memoir ... her wit and expert storytelling soften some heartbreaking experiences

Heartbreaking, hilarious and impossible to put down: Paris Lees' What It Feels Like For a Girl is genuinely singular. It's raw, viscerally real and Byron is a character who will stay with you long after you've finished

Powerful and authentic, a memoir with the depth and writerly virtuosity of a fine novel.

A truly fresh, exciting take on the genre of memoir

Raw, heartbreaking, and scorchingly funny, What It Feels Like For A Girl is a boldly-written and truly transformative account of an extraordinary life story. Please do yourself a favour and read it

Lees has lived an extraordinary life, and it makes for extraordinary writing

A ketamine-laced coming of age memoir... recalls being in a nightclub where you can still smoke and euphoric music blares non-stop ... a dark comedy from a little-heard perspective. Even when there's blood dripping on the page as a result of bullying, Lees manages to make it read like a sketch ... very powerful

Smart and exuberant... By excavating her painful past in her memoir, [Lees] has crafted a vivid story of trauma, rebellion and astonishing resilience

Fast and funny and furious... the writing is so alive and warm that you don't feel remotely miserable while reading it, even while your heart is pounding for her

It is so vivid, and the use of dialect so clever, that it feels as if you are living her life with her.

Written in a chatty, instantly endearing vernacular, What It Feels Like For A Girl is a crank-it-up-to-11 account of the British trans experience.

Written entirely in Midlands dialect, with each chapter named after a Noughties hit, Paris Lees's novelised account of her Nottingham childhood will make you shake with laughter and weep with heartbreak in the space of a few pages.

Set to be one of this summer's must-reads, Paris Lees' debut book is a coming-of-age memoir about her early life in the East Midlands. Written in Nottingham dialect, it's a story of growing up in a small town, with deliciously evocative tales of Noughties nights out.

Energetic, dark and hilarious. Paris Lees, with her loud and proud sense of self, is set to explode.. if you read one book this summer, make it What It Feels Like for a Girl... radically cool, explosive and riotous ... long may Lees' voice shine neon bright

Like Alan Sillitoe on acid... it's got to be a film. I've never read anything like it.

Extraordinary, riotous, furiously unique, moving and funny, What It Feels Like for a Girl is a deeply important book as well as being a fantastic read

Clever, gripping, messy, sad. I loved it.

Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl, an exuberant account of Paris Lees's tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where "the streets are paved wi' dog shit". Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders' institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter.

Bold and compulsively readable... She writes with humour about heartbreakingly harrowing moments while simultaneously capturing the dazzling joy of Nottingham nightlife and the importance of finding those who accept you for who you truly are

Paris Lees

Praise for What It Feels Like for a Girl

Fresh, original, heartbreaking and optimistic. The subtlety of time passing reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's writing.

Paris Lees is the voice of a generation

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

Fresh, original, heartbreaking and optimistic. The subtlety of time passing reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's writing.

Paris Lees is the voice of a generation

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

Fresh, original, heartbreaking and optimistic. The subtlety of time passing reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie's writing.

Paris Lees is the voice of a generation

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

Articles featuring Paris Lees

‘The future is wide open’: How trans literature came of age

The UK’s best literary days out for bookworms and readers

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