Review of Pageboy by Elliott Page

*Pageboy* by Elliot Page (2023). Published by Flatiron.

Although by the time I am writing this, I will have wrapped up my internship at the Smithsonian, but during my six months there as a remote intern I was listening to audiobooks like it was no one’s business. I can’t work in silence; this is something I knew going into it, especially after going to graduate school.

I tend to go on Libby in order to find my audiobooks, as my local library actually has such a decent collection, and I have a tendency to only go for the books that are available at the time I need them at.

So this time I was scrolling through and saw the audiobook for Pageboy was available. I remember when the memoir was coming out how I was seeing it all over social media.

Despite being someone who watches a ton of movies, I have a confession: I’ve never seen anything with Page in it. Maybe I will after listening to the memoir, but this truly was a crash course in all things Page.

Anyways, I’m starting to ramble. Here is my review of the memoir!

A memoir from actor Elliot Page on their coming-of-age.

I think something to note about this memoir is that it isn’t really told from a linear format, which, if you’re listening to the book, then you might get a little confused about how the chronology of all this lines up.

We bounce back and forth between Page’s upbringing in Canada to the present day, where Page has become a major advocate for trans people due to transitioning themself.

There’s also the in-between moments here, and one of the scenes that stood out to me was flying with Michael Cera and his parent to get to a shoot.

If you’re looking for the Hollywood moments in this memoir, I feel like you’re not going to get a ton that satisfies you.

I think there are some good pockets of what life was like for Page under this system—one of the ones that stood out to me in this section was about filming a movie in which Page was told to appear ultra feminine despite Page feeling like the character did not need that at all.

These chapters can get really difficult, and while I myself don’t identify as certain ways and can’t relate on that level, I can imagine that this memoir can be too much to read at times.

This is a dense book if you’re coming into it completely blind. There are mentions of sexual assault, violence, and incidents where people are deliberately being dense and ignorant, coming across as hateful at times.

I was not expecting any of this at all and did a double take when I heard these moments, as I was not expecting them at all.

I was also a little shocked at how they were just told and there was nothing analytic about it—they came across as just being said and nothing more, just something that happened to Page.

Obviously we need to confront these kinds of experiences in literature and should not try to censor Page in any ways, but I think I wanted more. And I’m questioning myself as I write this, as should we expect victims to reflect more on such an incident for our benefit?

On a writing level, this was a standard celebrity memoir to me. There are some celebrity memoirs where I think the writing (or the ghostwriting) comes across as poor, but Page’s wasn’t bad. I think it was just standard though and I wasn’t particularly impressed with what I was listening to with the language.

Overall Thoughts

I’m glad I listened to this memoir in the end. I think we need to read (or listen) to a diverse number of voices, and there aren’t many actors working in Hollywood that are openly trans and advocating for trans rights.

What happened to Page in the industry is horrifying, as we see, but some of the shining moments for me that stood out the most was talking about their childhood.

Perhaps it was the distance leading to these coming across as more introspective, but those were my favorite parts of the memoir.

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