Ten Steps to Nanette
A Memoir Situation
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Multi-award-winning Hannah Gadsby broke comedy with their show Nanette. Now they take us through the defining moments in their life and their powerful decision to tell the truth—no matter the cost.
Don’t miss Hannah Gadsby’s Something Special, now streaming on Netflix!
“Hannah is a Promethean force, a revolutionary talent. This hilarious, touching, and sometimes tragic book is all about where their fires were lit.”—Emma Thompson
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar, Vulture
“There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself,” Hannah Gadsby declared in their show Nanette, a scorching critique of the way society conducts public debates about marginalized communities. When it premiered on Netflix, it left audiences captivated by their blistering honesty and their singular ability to take viewers from rolling laughter to devastated silence. 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.
Gadsby grew up as the youngest of five children in an isolated town in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. They perceived their childhood as safe and “normal,” but as they gained an awareness of their burgeoning queerness, the outside world began to undermine the “vulnerably thin veneer” of their existence. After moving to mainland Australia and receiving a degree in art history, Gadsby found themselves adrift, working itinerant jobs and enduring years of isolation punctuated by homophobic and sexual violence. At age twenty-seven, without a home or the ability to imagine their own future, they were urged by a friend to enter a stand-up competition. They won, and so began their career in comedy.
Gadsby became well known for their self-deprecating, autobiographical humor that made them the butt of their own jokes. But in 2015, as Australia debated the legality of same-sex marriage, Gadsby started to question this mode of storytelling, beginning work on a show that would become “the most-talked-about, written-about, shared-about comedy act in years” (The New York Times).
Harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person, to their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, and their struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, finally arriving at the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this stunning debut, Emmy Award–winning comedian Gadsby guides readers on a tour of her life that's every bit as intimate, gutting, and untidy as the performance referenced in the title. Decades before international audiences met her through her 2018 Netflix comedy special, Nanette, Gadsby was a Tasmanian girl alienated from her peers in the '80s by her autism, ADHD, and burgeoning lesbian identity—none of which, she reveals, she understood until she was much older. Though heavily affected by sexual abuse and rape in her youth and young adulthood that led to multiple misdiagnoses ("borderline personality disorder, bipolar, irritable bowel syndrome, too much fat, etc."), Gadsby resists centering her abusers, instead offering a candid, often bawdy account of her nonlinear path toward healing—shaped by a gauntlet of therapists, a career in "mak a joke out of" her mental health, and her loving yet complex relationship with her family. To discourage readers from "fall into the trap of playing truth detective," she eschews cohesive timelines and, in doing so, vividly evokes the "disorientation" of living with trauma. Meanwhile, humorous asides are scattered throughout by way of Terry Pratchett–esque footnotes—"Seriously... I am triggering all of the warnings." This stirring tale of resilience laughs in the face of the "inspiration porn" industry.
Customer Reviews
Thank you, Hannah!
I was introduced to Hannah Gadsby when I saw her interviewed by Anthony Mason on CBS (US) and I’ve been a great fan of hers ever since. She is a breath of fresh air in a sea of stale, vapid and monolithic entertainment. But she’s so much more than an entertainer; beyond her cleverness and impeccable comedic timing, she’s a teacher. The very best kind, the kind that challenges you to think and reevaluate the world around you.