If you don’t want to read the whole review, then I can give it to you in one sentence: I fucking love Hannah Gadsby, and I’m betting you will too. There, that’s all you really need to know. No? Want more? Okay, here it is.
If you have yet to experience Hannah Gadsby, she’s a comedian from Tasmania, Australia who has shot to fame (notoriety?) thanks to her Netflix show, Nanette. Which isn’t really what you’d expect from a comedy show, mainly because only the first part of it is, you know, jokes. Gadsby took the format and “broke” it. She used it to draw in her audience, and then she let loose with both barrels, sharing all the trauma, pain and abuse that had been inflicted on her – and by extension on so many other people like her. It’s tough. It’s upsetting. It’s so, so fucking good.
If you don’t think you’re up for that, that’s okay – you can start with one of her other shows. There’s Douglas (a great place to start) or Something Special (a great place to end up after you’ve put yourself through Nanette, and also her most recent). It doesn’t matter – she’s brilliant in all three.
This book is, as the title would suggest, a bit of a memoir situation. It spans her life from her childhood in a very religious part of a somewhat (very) small-minded (very) small town in Tasmania. She’s got stories about her parents and their vastly different approaches to that role, her siblings, what school was like (spoiler: not great) and all the various shit that she went through on the road to adulthood. There’s trauma, there’s accidental injuries, there’s interesting fashion choices and there’s a goldmine of material for Gadsby’s particular brand of irreverent, confrontational, tongue-in-cheek humour.
I don’t want to tell you all the different points of conflict in this, because for one it’s spoilers, but mostly because I can’t tell it even nearly as well as Gasdby herself does, and I don’t want to wreck her brilliant delivery. I will say that this had absolutely everything you could want from a memoir. I couldn’t stop listening (the audiobook, btw, is read by the author and is bloody fantastic) once I started, and I immediately wanted to go back to the beginning and start again.
Which brings me right back to where I started: I love this woman. And, I think, if you’re the sort of person who finds the books I like appealing and has been around here for a little while, so will you. I definitely think you should give her a go. There’s really no down side unless you have a weak stomach, but even then it’s definitely worth it. Ten out of ten!
Multi-awardwinning Hannah Gadsby transformed comedy with her show Nanette, even as she declared that she was quitting stand-up. Now, she takes us through the defining moments in her life that led to the creation of Nanette and her powerful decision to tell the truth-no matter the cost.
‘There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.’ -Hannah Gadsby, Nanette
Gadsby’s unique stand-up special Nanette was a viral success that left audiences captivated by her blistering honesty and her ability to create both tension and laughter in a single moment. But while her worldwide fame might have looked like an overnight sensation, her path from open mic to the global stage was hard-fought and anything but linear.
Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person from Tasmania-where homosexuality was illegal until 1997-to her ever-evolving relationship with comedy, to her struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, and finally to the backbone of Nanette – the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.
Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette continues Gadsby’s tradition of confounding expectations and norms, properly introducing us to one of the most explosive, formative voices of our time. – Goodreads
Book Title: Ten Steps to Nanette
Author: Hannah Gadsby
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook/Hardback
Published By: Allen & Unwin
Released: March 29, 2022
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Humour, Neurodiverse, LGBT+
Pages: 400
Date Read: May 17-23, 2023
Rating: 10/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.49/5 (11,718 ratings)
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