This was excellent, one of the best books of the year so far. Chelsea does a fantastic job of letting the reader into her inner world. When Chelsea released the classified documents to WikiLeaks I was in my final year of high school, and when the news of her arrest broke my sense of global politics was still underdeveloped enough that I didn’t totally understand the impact of what she’d done at the time. While the WikiLeaks is the through-line of the story, Chelsea takes us back to her childhood and charts a course through her life to present day. She paints a clear picture of the types of circumstances that might push someone towards signing up for the military in the first place. And she tells her story of coming out and transition in prison. This was the first time I’ve read a memoir from someone only a few years older than me, so being able to think about where I was in my own life when events described in the book were occurring was a new experience. I admire Chelsea immensely and I will not shut up about this book!!

This will appeal if you enjoyed the insufferability (is that a word?) and tension of books like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and Yellowface. As someone in recovery I had a visceral reaction to her attempts to rationalise and justify her addiction. The cycles of addiction like the bargaining and secrecy were so well-written. One of my niche interests is lesbian pulp novels so I thoroughly enjoyed all the references, and had read most of the pulp novels mentioned. I still don’t know how I felt about the ending, but overall enjoyed the book.