Description

The story of female footballer Florrie and the amazing hidden history of the women’s game come to life in this debut graphic novel about football, friendship and falling in love.

‘A really great graphic novel… beautifully drawn and very well written’ ALISON BECHDEL

‘If you put Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home in football kit, you might come up with something like Florrie’ ZING TSJENG

When Florrie’s great-niece discovers Florrie was a footballer in the early twentieth century, she unearths a secret history both on and off the pitch.

Boxes from the attic contain photos, objects and letters, revealing football games and love affairs in Norfolk, London and Paris. Florrie’s adventures touch on both invented and real events: huge crowds at matches in London and Preston, international fixtures, dances at lesbian club Le Monocle in Paris, and the devastating consequences of the FA’s 1921 ban on women’s football.

This is a story of self-discovery, friendship and queer love, alongside huge (and little known) historical moments for the women’s game. In Florrie, Anna Trench brings readers a beautifully drawn, evocative and warm-hearted love-song to an unforgettable woman and sport.

‘Bright with the feeling of liberation, and the risks and joys of following your heart’ SEAN HEWITT

Charming and incredibly moving’ RACHEL RAMSAY

Publisher Review

Charming and incredibly moving. I loved it from start to finish and cried at the end. — Rachel Ramsay, director of Copa 71 Such a moving and heart-warming book. A poignant exploration of the worlds of freedom that open and close around us, both in our futures and in our pasts. Most of all, Florrie is bright with the feeling of liberation, and the risks and joys of following your heart. — Sean Hewitt, author of OPEN, HEAVEN I enjoyed every page. So good to see a bande desinee book as fine and original in terms of story and illustration, and in England. I thought it tender and true. Remarkable. — Michael Morpurgo [It has] the emotional intelligence and sharpness of Paula Knight and Alison Bechdel… so beautifully captures the experience of playing, belonging… The book is so timely….I so admire the way this book has found a way to bring this history into public view as a part of the conversation about the game now. — Claire Lynch, author of A FAMILY MATTER Between the – beautifully drawn and deceptively simple – lines of Florrie there is a world of suppressed desire and yearning. Florrie longs to play a forbidden game, to be in love, to move through terrible grief. Anna Trench vividly recreates the sadness and shock of the post-Great War era, when the FA banned women’s football, and skilfully entwines it with a queer love story and a young woman becoming herself. — Miriam Gold, author of ELENA: A HAND MADE LIFE Florrie is a gem of a novel imagining the forces that give shape to a life as the young Florrie steps out into the world. Every page is luminous – delicately, thrillingly, alive with feeling. — Chetna Maroo, author of WESTERN LANE If you put Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home in football kit, you might come up with something like Florrie. It reminds me of the very best graphic novels – elegantly emotive, spare and vulnerable. — Zing Tsjeng, author of FORGOTTEN WOMEN Florrie will take you on a journey with the power to imagine and play at its core. Football is a game but it is also a dance, a connector between each player on the pitch, and in Florrie the characters dance across time together… Anna Trench shows us the importance of a connected queer history to allow us to dance across our pitches today. — Tash Walker