My body is distant, Paige maylott

ECW Press, 2023

My Body is Distant is Paige Maylott’s daring and tender memoir that braids together cancer diagnosis, gender transition, and virtual gaming/romance. Each of these strands is explored with honesty and intimacy, colored with wry humour. The braided structure makes for multi-layered storytelling where memory, desire, and imagination are inextricably linked. One of the things that stood out to me is the unselfconscious way the book tackles sexuality and sexual experiences—and how those are tied to authenticity of identity. Avoiding the typical squeamishness of CanLit around the erotic, My Body is Distant actually makes the body very present and in doing so illuminates the things that make us most fragile, and the things that make us most whole.

—Anuja Varghese, Hamilton