Francesca's Thoughts

Good morning from someone who a) tripped over and landed on their bad arm recently and has spent most days since wondering if today’s the day their wrist is going to snap, and b) has a deadline to finish their undergraduate dissertation. I’m fine, I whisper, eating home brand Nutella from a spoon and experimenting with physiotherapy exercises as my Internet cuts out for the twelfth time that hour. Ah, 2024. At least I’ve got some fantastic books on the go, and here’s one of them!

Read Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure, by Lewis Hancox, if you like:

• Stories set in an England that’s recognisably England to anyone who lives here. You know how some TV shows depict UK schools as sort of American and kind of glitzy, presumably to appeal to the International Market? This book does not do that. The teenagers in it are all recognisably awkward children trying to figure life out. It was refreshing. Think Derry Girls refreshing.
• Also does anyone else remember Tammy Girl because I’d forgotten about it until a scene where characters go clothes shopping, and Tammy Girl was the shit when I was nine. I think it was part of BHS? What a time.
• Accurate depictions of divorced parents.
• Observational comedy drama about being trans today. This is the sort of book you could give to a relative with whom you’re trying to have a conversation about gender and they’re repeating something they’ve read in the Daily Mail or seen on Facebook, because it’s simultaneously just a comic about a lad in St Helens and a brilliantly paced Trans Experience capsule. You’ll get out of it what you want to get out of it, and if all you want to get is Tammy Girl throwbacks, that’s fine. If you’re in the mood to better understand trans issuesTM or if you want to see an experience similar to your own or your loved ones’ experiences, then you will. Storytelling, huh. It’s so multifaceted. Someone should write their undergrad dissertation on it.

Righty ho I have to go and find some weather appropriate footwear. The blue skies we’ve been having are taunting me as I go through Draft 6 of my literature review. Guarantee it’ll rain the day I submit.

Look after yourselves!
Francesca

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to read my short stories and see behind-the-scenes work, you can sample? the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon for a month with this link. No pressure to stick around! Think of it as trying a miniature dessert with no requirement to eat the whole menu.

Here are the books I’ve published so far and where you can find them. If you enjoy my book recommendations, browse my Bookshop.org page here. Keep in touch via my monthly(ish) newsletter!