A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis

Lavery, Grace | Paperback / softback | 14-02-2022 | 9781914198045

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: Grace performs in a David Lynch remake of Sunset Boulevard and is reprogrammed as a 1960s femmebot; she is targeted with anonymous letters from a mysterious cabal of clowns; she writes a socialist manifesto disguised as a porn parody of QI (or is it vice versa?).

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.

‘Grace’s writing is laugh out loud funny, Please Miss refuses to be tied down by old tropes, and instead surprises us on every page.’ –Travis Alabanza

‘This is the queer memoir you’ve been waiting for; 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, author of In the Dream House

‘Reframes the question of transition from the familiar journey from A to B, and replaces that journey with a can’t-look-away performance of wit, language, irreverence, and delight so compelling that a reader forgets about destinations all together.’ –Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

‘Blessedly twisted . . . supremely intelligent, innovative, and important.’ –Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

‘Kaleidoscopic, magnetic, erudite, fierce, a raw nerve in a reverie, amped-up on desire and doubt, making trouble as if dared, dazzling like flames.’ –Jeremy Atherton Lin. , author of Gay Bar

‘Maddening, snort-inducingly hilarious, perverted, and giving 0 f*cks, this is going to change the game. Buckle up baby!’ –Lauren John Joseph, author of At Certain Points We Touch

‘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, author of physical, playtime and pandemonium