Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2023.
When Emmett de Monterey is 18 months old, he is diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Growing up in south-east London, he is spat at on the street, and prayed over at church. At his sixth-form college for disabled students, he is told he will be expelled if the rumours are true, that he is gay. Supposedly life-changing surgery on his legs in America failed to change his life, and in this vivid, affecting memoir he faces with clear-eyed intensity what it is to live the only life you have, even when it falls short of expectations.
‘A frank and intimate memoir written with an incredible clear-eyed intensity’ Claire Fuller
‘Vivid, engaging . . . this insightful memoir sheds light on the author’s life as a disabled gay man who is often rendered invisible’ Andrew McMillan
