

(I particularly liked the recurring disdain for the musical Cats.) Many of these lives were all too short, and deserved far more than Paris Is Burning’s 78 minutes. The scenes of love and support between the characters have a kindness that more than matches the sadness, and the dialogue, peppered with early 80s disco or TV references and “Spanglais” dialect, is frequently hilarious.


Photograph: This is not a bleak novel, however – far from it. Larger-than-life characters in Paris is Burning.
