The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends.
Williamson has worked with teens grappling with their gender identities, and she folds practical information, about hormonal therapy to freeze puberty, for instance, as well as empathy into her story. The two teens share their secrets, but can closeted David and outwardly, comfortably male Leo really help each other? David and Leo alternate narration chapter by chapter, the former confiding her discomfort and fear, the latter describing the sexual fireworks he feels when making out with Alicia.
David and Leo initially come together as math tutee and tutor but slowly become friends. Leo arrives with a reputation as a tough guy and just wants to remain alone to do his schoolwork, at which he excels, but falls for Alicia and begins dating her-until she learns that he’s biologically female. An attack at school leads him to transfer to David’s much-better one. Fifteen-year-old Leo, on the other hand, was born with a girl’s body but has lived as a boy most of his life, with the knowledge and help of his dysfunctional, poor-side-of-town family. Though The Art of Being Normal has come under slight criticism by some for not being authored by a transgender writer, it is an important book that has great credibility, having been inspired by Williamson’s two years spent working as an administrator at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at London’s Tavistock Centre, which supports under-18s struggling with their gender identity.Two British transgender teens try to come to terms with their lives while facing serious bullying in their school.įourteen-year-old David has always known that she wants to be a girl but has kept it secret from everyone, including her family, telling only her two best friends. The boys are all bravery and wit in the face of enmity and bigotry, and their friendship is both remarkable and unexpected. Leo also has secrets largely the result of his difficult background, and his friendship with David begins when he stands up for him on his first day at Eden Park School. David harbours a secret: despite what everyone assumes, he isn’t gay, he’s attracted to the most popular boy in school because he’s a girl living inside a male body. Philip Pullman has called Lisa Williamson’s The Art of Being Normal ‘a life-changing and life-saving book,’ and this is just one of the reasons it became the bestselling young adult hardback debut of 2015, pulling in a nomination for the Carnegie Medal and being listed for five other awards that year.ĭavid and Leo, its two teenage protagonists, are both boys navigating their own rocky teenage terrain by attempting to be invisible.
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