April Ashley's Odyssey

by Duncan Fallowell and April Ashley

Jonathan Cape, 1982, b/w photographic plates, hardcover, dustjacket, ISBN 0224018493

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing to edges and corners, dustjacket has a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing to edges (see photographs)

'In order to survive the kind of hypocrisy sometimes displayed by otherwise tolerant people when faced with the subject of a sex change, a very resilient sense of humour is called for.
In this outstanding collaboration with friend and writer Duncan Fallowell, the descriptions of social scenes positively sparkle; in Paris where Sartre sat about in his dingy overcoat, in London where April shone in the salons of wealth and rank, and in Spain where her suitors included very famous actors as well as her future husband.
We encounter the Liverpool slum where a young boy was relentlessly bullied and beaten senseless by his peers; the first, unexpected remarks about his unusual beauty; the terrible confusion which set in when he went to sea; the suicide attempts and sentence to the most stringently policed section of a mental hospital... '