Go the Way Your Blood Beats

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AN EXTRAORDINARILY MOVING AND ORIGINAL MEMOIR OF GROWING UP GAY AND DISABLED IN 1980S LONDON

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2023

When Emmett de Monterey is eighteen months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy. Words too heavy for his twenty-five-year-old artist parents and their happy, smiling baby.

Growing up in south-east London in the 1980s, Emmett is spat at on the street and prayed over at church. At his mainstream school, teachers refuse to schedule his classes on the ground floor, and he loses a stone from the effort of getting up the stairs. At his sixth form college for disabled students, he’s told he will be expelled if the rumours are true, if he’s gay.

And then Emmett is chosen for a first-of-its-kind surgery in America which he hopes will ‘cure’ him, enable him to walk unaided. He hopes for a miracle: to walk, to dance, to be able to leave the house when it rains. To have a body that’s everyday beautiful, to hold hands in the street. To not be gay, which feels like another word for loneliness. But the ‘miracle’ doesn’t occur, and Emmett must reckon with a world which views disabled people as invisible, unworthy of desire. He must fight to be seen.

‘Vivid, engaging… this insightful memoir sheds light on the author’s life as a disabled gay man who is often rendered invisible’ Andrew McMillan, Guardian Book of the Day

‘A frank and intimate memoir written with an incredible clear-eyed intensity’ Claire Fuller Vivid, engaging… this insightful memoir sheds light on the author’s life as a disabled gay man who is often rendered invisible—Andrew McMillan, Guardian

A frank and intimate memoir written with an incredible clear-eyed intensity—Claire Fuller

The magic of Emmett De Monterey’s book is its disarming accessibility. Compulsive reading, unique, this beautifully crafted work is suffused with depth, affection, and remarkable observations. De Monterey is a profoundly gifted writer.—Charlotte Fox Weber

Exploring the reality of growing up gay and disabled in 1980s London, this beautiful memoir is as uplifting as it is devastating, and as funny and wise as it is profound.—iNews

Astonishing, illuminating and enriching.—Matt Cain

There is a tension, brilliantly evoked throughout, in the paradoxically hyper-visible but invisible disabled body and how it relates to notions of being “out”.—The GuardianEmmett de Monterey is a trained psychotherapist. He lives in London with his husband and their dog. Go the Way Your Blood Beats is his first book.GB

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