Memoir is a gift — at least that’s what I always think when I’m reading it. There aren’t too many ways to explore inside someone’s head that aren’t invasive or demanding, outside of someone’s memoir. They’re a way to learn, or to see a new perspective from the inside, or to brush against someone else’s experiences, even if they are remarkably different from your own.

I often wonder if they’re reliable — it’s easy to sugarcoat, or to dodge, or to simply forget and write something that maybe isn’t the way things actually happened. Memory is notoriously unreliable. Scientists say so. 

Paige Maylott gets to the heart of this question of the unreliable narrator immediately, and puts it out of the way so that you can simply read and inhabit her story for a little while in My Body is Distant. 

“Memory is a slippery and selective thing,” Maylott writes, right out of the gate. She shares her earliest memory and then “Already, I have fabricated details to draw you [into] my story … I have only included these pseudo-facts to pave the way to a moment that stuck with and still shapes who I am forty-something years later.”

Her book spans decades, sliding between them as necessary to bring pieces together to share her trans-woman’s coming out story. It shifts between a cancer diagnosis to imploding marriage, to a love story, to becoming the person she was meant to be. And Maylott doesn’t flinch — she is funny, messy, droll, sad, smart, scared, and insightful and it feels like she’s talking in your ear. 

Peppered throughout, Maylott brings video games like Zork and online fantasy role-playing games to life, even for those who have never played them. We meet her friends, her lovers, and she lets us get to know her because she invites the reader in. You never get the feeling that she’s dodging the truth as she remembers it, or polishing it to make it more palatable. 

As the title suggests, disconnection from one’s body is a major theme in this memoir, which is published by ECW Press and comes out September 19. 

As Maylott tries to reconcile who she appears to be, she immerses herself into Second Life. According to Wikipedia (for those not in the know), “Second Life is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multiplayer online virtual world.” 

There, Maylott was able to create a more authentic version of herself and her life online just as real as her life outside of the game. Maylott is a gifted world-builder — when she describes the scenes taking place in Second Life, they are as immersive, tangible, and physical as any you’d find in your favourite fantasy novel. Maylott brings the senses alive when she writes these memories. Her approach to sharing these moments only underscore how important this digital life was to her, and how it gave her the courage and freedom she needed to become her true self in the real world. 

As a reader, I find it impossible to read a book like this and shut out the context of the world, even though Maylott herself keeps things within a personal context. Right now, trans people are facing growing hatred and legislative challenges to their personhood and choices. To share a book like this, at this time, is a brave and generous act. My Body is Distant is a reminder to have empathy, and a reminder that all of us want the same things: healthy bodies, the ability to be ourselves, people we love and who love us, and the freedom to live without fear. 

My Body is Distant is beautifully written. And while it may not be glamorous to gush about structure, Maylott has done something very original and creative with the memoir’s narrative, that keeps up the pace and tells her story far more richly than if she’d told it from beginning to end in order. Whose life fits together that neatly, anyway? 

Paige Maylott is on the Writers of Non-Fiction Panel with Todd Lawson, Tara Sidhoo Fraser and the Whistler Independent Book Award winner for non-fiction on Saturday, Oct. 14 at 10 a.m. at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler. Tickets go on sale Aug. 21. The Whistler Writers Festival is Oct. 12-16, 2023.