If you're a fan of memoirs or Hannah Gadsby's comedy special, "Nanette" you'll love this book.

Hannah Gadsby tells her life story alongside broader cultural and historical context concerning the gay rights movement in Australia. I particularly liked the parts when she talked about her start in comedy as well as the process of writing "Nanette."

Gadsby writes a bit about her past traumas, so be careful to check content warnings before reading.

Thank you, NetGalley, for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I watched Nanette when it came on Netflix, and I was in awe. The content was an absolute punch in the gut, rendered by a comedian who delivered each "punchline" with the perfect inflections and timing. Hannah Gadsby is a great comedian. When Douglass premiered on Netflix, I watched with rapt attention on the edge of my seat as Hannah Gadsby gave another fantastic performance.

Truthfully, I was a little wary of this book at first. Even though it was Hannah Gadsby, I was a little nervous to read this book because I didn't know what to expect. However, I shouldn't have worried.

If you thought Nanette was a punch in the gut, this book was a whole body slam.

This book gave a lot of context to the "jokes" presented in Nanette, and when watching the show after reading this book, the jokes felt deeper and landed even harder. Ten Steps to Nanette (a memoir situation) was a recounting of Hannah Gadsby's life up to the point of her ground-breaking show Nanette. While a little slow at points, it was worth the setup. Honestly, though, even the slow bits I didn't mind because listening to Hannah Gadsby's voice and delivery is mesmerizing, and I found every time I put this book down, I couldn't wait to pick it back up. There was just something about it that grabbed my attention and wouldn't let me go.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

WOW, ok. Hannah Gadsby is an excellent comedian and, no surprise, that carries over into her writing as well. This book is very well written and her voice and personality rings true. It's probably one of the most authentic books I'll ever read. She dives into her life, her comedy, and her experiences walking the world as an autistic, queer woman. She is unapologetically and unabashedly herself and does a fantastic job of contextualizing both herself and her work. The second chapter in particularly is quite long, but excellent in content. Once I got through that, I flew through the rest of her book. I would highly recommend this.

What a smart, interesting, curious, honest, courageous person - that was wonderful! Having been blown away by the comedy special, I was so grateful when Ballantine sent me an advanced copy. Each section of this book made me want to read more and more. Highly recommend. Make sure you watch her special, too.

This was a really well written book. I laughed out loud quite a few times. Hannah Gadsby is so relatable and likable.

I do think that watching Nanette is a serious prerequisite for reading this, as the writing assumes that one is here because they saw Nanette.

Really appreciated the couple of moments with really wonderfully inclusive language for genderqueer & nonbinary people.

Ten Steps to Nanette is as raw, real and funny as the comedy special where it gets its namesake. Hannah approaches the telling of her trauma in a way that while matter-of-fact, will make readers feel safe. She combines her life growing up as an undiagnosed, closeted child and teen with Australian and Tasmanian history. This helps readers, especially international readers, the important context that surrounded her life then, and still impacts her today.

However, while trauma and politics are discussed, there is certainly much more to the book than that, We get funny anecdotes and an insight into how the hit not-comedy special Nanette came about. I highly recommend this book to everyone wanting to get a new perspective.

This memoir from Hannah Gadsby traces the course of her life from growing up in small town Tasmania where homosexuality was illegal until the mid-1990s to her journey toward comedy. She's overcome so much to create this life for herself and it was really remarkable--and heartbreaking-- to read about. I felt it could've been tightened up a bit in places, but it's a great piece of nonfiction nonetheless. Even inspired me to rewatch Nanette for the third time after reading it.

I really like Hannah Gadsby but I am not sure I can say the same about this memoir. This book is several things all in one. It is a view into the mind of a neurodivergent, history of gay rights in Australia, a list of many physical injuries, and finally the impact repeated trauma and misdiagnoses can have on a person.

I think my biggest issue with Ten Steps to Nanette was the first and largest part of the book. It was a yearly breakdown of Hannah's childhood with the corresponding history of gay rights in Australia. It was a struggle to get through this section which I can only imagine was maybe some of what Hannah felt at times.

But even with this I am glad I read it and would recommend it.

I may be biased but I absolutely adore Hannah Gadsby. Her Netflix specials are one of a kind, life changing, beautiful moving pieces of art and her book is no different. Her words have so much meaning and emotion behind them. Would highly recommend this read whether you are a fan or not! Ty for the advanced copy

Hannah Gadsby never misses. Whether it's her stand-up or her writing, I am in eternal awe of this phenomenal being. Ten Steps to Nanette was exactly as heartwrenching and gut-tickling as you'd expect to be.

Hannah Gadsby is a smart, funny, wonderful human, and I greatly enjoyed getting to hear about Hannah's life. I sought an autism diagnosis after seeing Hannah's show Douglas live in 2019. I wrongly assumed that the majority of this book would be about Hannah's autism diagnosis. It is certainly discussed in depth, but it is not the main focus of the book. Hannah's life experiences had me reflecting on my own, but I discovered we have less in common than I previously assumed and didn't see myself in the pages to the degree I thought I would. That's not a bad thing and is entirely due to my own presumptions. Still a strong and enjoyable memoir.

I don’t know how to rate this book! I love Gadsby SO much, but I do feel much of her personality is told through tone—- which is obviously missing from the book. (Maybe I should have tried the audiobook?) This book is heartbreaking, as is so much of her work. (I am kind of bummed she had an entire show called Taylor Swift. Why can’t everything I love love each other?) But, I recommend this book to anyone who has watched Gadsby’s specials and felt called to them. Thank you to Random House and to Netgalley for the ARC!

This was a great insight into Hannah's early upbringing and life. There was quite a bit of finessing that went into how Nanette was created, and it's really impressive. I am a new fan and this book made me want to explore all her other acts before Nannette that she mentions and walks through.

DNF at 58%. I loved Nanette (and Douglas) and was so so sooo excited for this book, but ultimately I just could not get into it and felt like I was forcing myself every time I picked it up.

Ten Steps to Nanette. I’m going to be bossy right now and tell you to watch the Nanette special on Netflix read the book, and then watch the special again. I’ve been a casual fan of Hannah Gadsby for a few years, but didn’t know much about her beyond the Netflix specials. This book is full of heart and grit and love and grief. Highly recommend! Google trigger warnings so that you don’t go in blind.

This is an absolutely stunning memoir. Every iteration of this review I have tried to write has gotten long-winded and off-track, so I am going to condense this into what I found most impressive and important about this memoir. Firstly, Gadsby’s comedic voice is very clear throughout the whole book. It was impossible not to hear Gadsby performing this as I read it, her performance cadence and presentation (at least, my impression of them from her two Netflix specials), have been masterfully adapted to the page. Secondly, she does an incredible job of bringing the reader into what the life experiences of a neurodivergent person are like, but not through explaining or speechifying, but simply showing. The way she is able to matter-of-factly explain how different sense experiences, or different environments, and so forth, have immediate and visceral effects on her, and how those are just givens that mediate her experiences of reality, allows the reader an interiority of experience that has the capacity to reorient an understanding of what it means to be in the world. Gadsby doesn’t ever make any claims to a universality of experience across the spectrum of neurodivergence, but instead she is incredibly specific about her experiences, and she does so centering her experiences instead of a diagnosis. It is one thing to be given a list of common characteristics of someone with ASD, but it is entirely different to be invited to follow their experiences starting from childhood, seeing how their understanding of and experience of the world shaped everything in profound ways that a diagnostic list can never do.

Gadsby manages to be hilarious, poignant, and gut punching all at the same time. She shares decades’ worth of context that was behind the hour-long performance of "Nanette" that most of us are familiar with, and it only serves to enrich her story and comedic bonafides while further cementing her as an incredible talent that is able to find the emotional center of an experience and then craft the narrative that shares that experience in such a way as for it to be most impactful, and simultaneously true to itself. By sharing her story in such an intimate and thoughtful way Gadsby has generously offered the opportunity to reconceptualize how we experience ourselves and other people, encouraging us to be kinder, better versions of ourselves.

I want to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group--Ballantine Book, who provided a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a great insight into Hannah's early upbringing and life. There was quite a bit of finessing that went into how Nanette was created, and it's really impressive. I am a new fan and this book made me want to explore all her other acts before Nannette that she mentions and walks through.

Special thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for sending this review copy of "Ten Steps. to Nanette," by Hannah Gadsby. I appreciate it.

~Thanks to Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Ten Steps to Nanette in exchange for an honest review. ~
This was simultaneously a funny, intelligent, and rough read. Early on, there’s a footnote that states that this will include a discussion of many hard-to-read topics, but I also think this starts on a hilarious foot. She’s not just telling her life story and she’s not putting the focus solely on her trauma, she’s guiding us through how she came to understand herself, which allowed her to be a more compassionate individual to both herself and others.

Hannah really does cover so much of her life, both the good and bad, much of which went into the inspiration of her piece Nanette (which I will definitely be watching here soon). I really appreciated that when discussing the early years of her life, she took the time to give context to the political environment she grew up in. Along with that, I also loved hearing about her relationship with art, something I didn’t know about her. Across the board, I was just so incredibly impressed with how eloquent Hannah is and how well she was able to verbalize and pen her experiences, thought processes, struggles, and feelings.

I loved that she gave context around Australia’s politics and society when talking about her formative years and her sexuality, it really helped to better set the scene and for me to understand her thought processes for the time. She also took the time to give context when discussing her diagnoses and the difficulty in diagnosing girls with ADHD and autism. Also, love the amount of body positivity and how she doesn’t allow her appearance to decide her worth as a human being??? Yas, queen.

One negative, as much as I appreciate the little sections within each step and the breakdown between Hannah’s experiences and the context around them, this layout made for a very stop-go, stop-go pacing and that did kind of make for a jarring reading experience.

If you like Hannah’s comedy style, you’ll like this book.

This book is probably going to mean the most to the same folks who enjoyed the show itself, being a blend of memoir and a relating of how the show came to be. Gadsby's writing voice is similar to that used in her shows, honest, clear, restless, and forthright where things matter. There is humor here, but it's best to go into it knowing that there's also a lot of heavy discussion of trauma, loss, and regret though none of it is locked into playing out the details in a way that could discomfort the reader nor, more importantly, leaving the author feeling like her most wounded parts need to be out on display for public consumption. I identified with parts of her experience and so it was sort of surreal reading it at times and a bit triggering at others, but we'll worth my time.