Together, the boys try to find the secret in Leo's sad past, overcome heartbreak, help David talk to his parents about his wishes, and become the best of friends.
And I have a feeling that my sarcastic italics won't show up on the website so let me tell you now, that last line was in the most sarcastic, most ironic of italics. When Leo moves to Daniel's nice, well-maintained school… shall we take a wild guess? Daniel's life gets turned upside down. And a note here, Leo's personality is far more complex and interesting than David's, who seems to be one of the blandest characters I've ever encountered. Leo is from a lower class background, with a broken family, an abusive mother and a twin who couldn't be more different to him. Throughout the book, this remains his defining feature, although there are several aspects of his personality left ambiguous for the reader, which could be further explored and deepened. His life, in short, is normal – apart from the fact that all he wants in the world is to have been born a girl. 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.So, without further ado, let's talk about The Art of Being Normal.ĭavid and Leo are two very different boys, David from a stereotypical middle class family, with loving parents and an annoying little sister.
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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