The Art Of Being Normal Lisa Williamson

What the book actually covers and who it's for

The Art Of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson is a YA novel that follows two teenagers at a strict boarding school in rural England — Leo, who is transgender and fighting to live as himself, and Anna, whose family is hiding dark secrets. The book deals with gender identity, bullying, family dysfunction, and the pressure to conform. It won the Children's Book Award in 2018 and is widely used in UK schools as a teaching text for PSHE and english literature. I've recommended this book to quite a few readers over the years, and I've also seen it misread by people who went in expecting something it isn't. It's not a coming-of-age fairy tale. It's a heavy book that doesn't pull punches about transphobia, homophobia, or how institutions fail young people who don't fit the mould. The writing itself is competent and accessible — clean prose, dual POV, short chapters that keep you moving — but the subject matter will sit with you.

The Art Of Being Normal Lisa Williamson

If you're looking to get the book, it's available in paperback from most major retailers. A decent copy runs around £8 to £12 depending on whether you buy new or second-hand. The ebook is usually cheaper, often under £4. I tend to suggest the paperback because people who read this book often want to annotate it or pass it along to someone else, and dog-earing pages in an ebook feels wrong for a book this earnest. Here's what most people miss on the first read. The book's central argument isn't just "be yourself." It's about how systems — schools, families, medical institutions — enforce normality and what happens when those systems fail the people they're supposed to protect. Leo's story is the one most people remember, but Anna's chapters are structurally just as important. She's trapped in a household where her brother has disappeared and her parents are performing a version of grief that's actually cover for something worse. Williamson uses parallel narrative to show that being "abnormal" in this world isn't a choice either character made — it's something imposed on them. One thing I learned from actually teaching discussion points around this book with older students: the romance subplot is easy to dismiss as conventional YA filler, but it's doing real work. Leo's relationship with David isn't just romantic colour — it's the mechanism through which Leo practices existing openly. The scenes where David simply accepts him without fanfare or crisis are the book's quietest and most radical moments. Beginners often skip past those pages. Don't.

There's also the matter of Terry, Leo's brother, who serves as a cautionary counterpoint. Terry chose to conform by becoming a teacher at the same school and enforcing its rules. That character exists to ask the question: what happens when someone internalises the system's hatred of them so completely that they become its enforcer? It's uncomfortable and it's necessary. A realistic problem I ran into when recommending this book is that some readers expect a resolution that doesn't match what actually happens. The ending is hopeful but not neatly tied up. Leo gets to be himself, yes, but he does it leaving the only home he's known, and Anna's family situation remains only partially resolved. I had a reader write to me frustrated that the book "didn't fix everything." My workaround was straightforward — I pointed them to the author's note where Williamson explicitly addresses this, and I shared that the book was partly inspired by real cases of trans youth being failed by boarding school systems in the UK. Knowing the real-world context reframes the ambiguity from a weakness into a deliberate statement. If you're teaching this or reading it in a group, here's a practical approach that actually works. Don't start with the big themes. Start with the setting. Hake's School is a character in itself — the uniforms, the old buildings, the tradition-obsessed culture. Once readers understand how suffocating the environment is, the conflicts make more sense. I usually have people map out the school's rules and traditions first, then identify which ones directly threaten Leo and Anna. It takes about ten minutes and it changes how the rest of the book lands.

The book isn't without flaws. Some secondary characters are underdeveloped — the love interest David could have used more interiority, and a few of the antagonist figures slip into one-note territory. Williamson knows this implicitly; the book is told largely through Leo and Anna's limited perspectives, and the world beyond them stays blurry on purpose. But if you're looking for nuanced exploration of trans identity in fiction, this book is a starting point rather than a definitive text. It's accessible, yes, but it's also aiming at a younger audience, and the treatment of gender transition is simplified compared to more mature YA or adult literature on the same topics. For readers who finish this and want more, I'd suggest moving on to works like Gender Quease by Maia Kobabe or Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston depending on whether they want memoir-form or something lighter. Williamson's follow-up novels, including The Truth About Elsewhere and the Winter Girls series, don't tackle the same subject matter directly but show her range as a writer of difficult topics for younger audiences. Bottom line: read it if you want a clear-eyed look at how institutions police identity. Read it if you're a teacher looking for a discussion-ready text. Skip it if you need every storyline resolved by the final page. The book earns its hope, but it doesn't hand it to you wrapped in ribbons.