A memoir of gender transition and recovery from addiction, a dance across genres, a ripping-up of the rulebook, Please Miss is unlike anything you’ve ever read before.
Grace Lavery is a reformed druggie, an unreformed omnisexual chaos Muppet, and a 100 per cent, all-natural, synthetic female hormone monster. How could her story be straightforward when she is anything but? The telling of her tale is kaleidoscopic, wild and audacious.
As Grace fumbles toward a new trans identity, she tries on dozens of different voices, creating a coat of many colours. The result is dazzling, unique and unforgettable. Startlingly funny and ruthlessly smart, Please Miss gives us what we came for, then slaps us in the face and orders us to come again.
‘A dizzying mix of theory and pastiche, metafiction and memory . . . Hilarious and sexy and terrifying in its brilliance. But don’t worry – Lavery is an avalanche you’ll be glad to be buried under.’ Carmen Maria Machado
‘A polychromatic, wild and joyous gambol through a world which is like ours but blessedly twisted . . . Come for the laugh-out-loud miniature windsock on page one, stay for the fascinating analysis of a discarded pig part in Jude the Obscure, end up profoundly moved.’ Maggie Nelson
‘As enthralling as an intimate all-night conversation with the brainy high femme BFF you wish you had. I wish it upon everyone.’ Melissa Febos
‘A daring, perverse, mind-blowing, intellectual, hilarious, outrageous, inspired work of art that somehow is touchingly sincere while giving no fucks whatsoever. I read this laughing out loud, clutching my pearls, my mind exploding in wonder.’ Michelle Tea
‘Like opening the Hamley’s selection of jack-in-the boxes and being hit in the face with a series of boxing gloves, cream pies, and cultural conundrums AND LOVING IT. Absorbing everything from clowns to Dickens as porno parody, this is a memoir like no other.’ Lauren John Joseph
‘Funny and warm and incredibly clever, and horny in a way that makes sex sound like the most natural thing in the world . . . it is remarkable.’ Marie Le Conte
‘Hot, sick, painfully vivid.’ Sophie Lewis
‘An unclassifiable pastiche of genuine beauty, a meta-memoir that takes its humor as seriously as its philosophy. Lush, louche, and utterly virtuosic.’ Jordy Rosenberg
‘Simultaneously mythic and demystifying . . . a beautiful, personal story about hope, joy, our bodies, and the meaty stories we build from them.’ Seiriol Davies
‘Grace Lavery has somehow managed to blend a rich overview of trans philosophy and theory with a languid, playful sexuality and humor . . . It’s a work of great seriousness that doesn’t take itself seriously at all.’ Nicole Cliffe
‘Please Miss will awe you with its swung prose, its hairpin generic turns, and its bouts of gleeful self-scrutiny . . . One chapter through and you’re ready to draw with Lavery, stand with her, hold with her.’ Paul Saint-Amour
‘A transition-memoir-as-fever-dream . . . Please Miss underscores the point that literature has evolved past the need for overcooked tell-all transition memoirs by presenting us with an hallucinatory journey that’s both hilarious and bizarre.’ Morgan Page
‘Maddening, snort-inducingly hilarious, perverted, and giving zero fucks, this is going to change the game. Buckle up baby!’ Lauren John Joseph
‘An honour, as a cis reader, to sit with the intelligence, wit and singular voice of Grace Lavery – to learn, laugh and be moved by such dazzling writing.’ Andrew McMillan