On Trampolining

On Trampolining

$17.95

Rebecca Perry

An essay from Booker finalist Rebecca Perry about the pursuit of success, the pain and pressure to get there, and failure—of the body, of the mind's ability to steer it, and of memory itself.

"A short, taut masterclass in poetic memoir."—Max Porter, author of Grief Is the Thing With Feathers

At age ten, Rebecca Perry was the eleventh best trampolinist in the world. At fifteen, she retired her leotard. On Trampolining asks what it means to be "very good but not the best," how years of training and competing live on in an adult body, and how to rebuild a sense of self.

A trampolining competition must be neat and clean and silent, save for the rhythmic creaking of springs. A slight shift on the way down, a landing that is even slightly off the mark, can ricochet the body at unknown angles, magnify the mistake, and throw off the next landing. But the landing must inevitably happen. Trampolining, Perry writes, is complete exposure.

In adulthood, Perry recounts an athlete’s attempt at mastery of the body, reaching toward the limits of language, memory, and the physical self. Drawing on memories that range from the distorted to the piercingly vivid, she pieces together her lived experience of a body moving, and transforming, through time and space: How do athletes—especially young women—maintain autonomy over bodies demanded to perform? How do we master "the art of control when there is nothing to hold on to"?

On Trampolining is a book about the pursuit of success, the pain and pressure to get there, and failure—of the body, of the mind's ability to steer it, and of memory itself.

On Trampolining is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.

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Praise for rebecca perry

“A wonderfully enticing combination of themes, woven together with a delicacy of touch. You can’t read it without reflecting on the fragile boundary between the present and the past.”—The 2026 Booker Prize jury

"May We Feed the King is made up of glimpses of scenes from odd angles and perspectives, with confounding reflections, shadows and movements: rooms seen through windows or from doorways, conversations half heard. It is as though we, not the long-dead courtiers, are the ghosts, as we creep around the palace peering into its rooms dressed in careful set-pieces, trying to interpret complex and momentous events from the few clues left behind... it richly rewards those who approach it with curiosity – just not in the ways we as readers (and as interpreters of stories in any form) have been trained to expect."—The Guardian

"A work of historical fiction that is about fiction, and storytelling... Robbed of any privacy, [the King] is watched at all times, by the reader as well as by his subjects, observed through a window or a crack in a storage trunk, as though we are spying on him from within. This, Perry shows, is what it is to read, whether a novel or history: to get a glimpse of a scene from just one angle, and to be left there to imagine..."—Lauren Elkin, The New York Times Book Review

"A love story between the present and the past... In Rebecca Perry’s novel, we witness two kinds of resurrection: that found in the art of fiction and that found in the art of curation, both bringing the dead vividly back to life."—Times Literary Supplement

“A feast for the senses… [Perry's] control of language is one of the novel’s greatest pleasures. Every word is exquisitely chosen, with many consciously conveying both a taste for flavor and a grab for power.”—The Financial Times

"Lyrical... it bears the marks of a novelist's intricate plotting and sense of pace... Perry stages a rich feast of images and ideas."—The Observer

"[A] deeply affecting debut novel about an artist who stages historic sites and the ruler whose life they hope to recapture. Every page of this gorgeous meditation on the past attests to Perry’s roots in poetry."—The Boston Globe

"May We Feed the King playfully deconstructs the creative and ultimately corrupt processes that order personal and collective memory."—Artforum

"A deft and poignant exploration of how our stories are told, and how much we can really know about our history."—Forbes

"There is pleasure on every page here... [a] sense of being on the outside looking in, of piecing together narrative from disparate scenes, peering at the action from behind the curator’s velvet ropes, following leads around corners, following a half-remembered line of logic in the dark, only to be unexpectedly, now and again, grabbed by the throat and pulled into the light."—Literary Hub

"May We Feed the King is a feat of meta storytelling that questions everything about how history is transmitted, and whose version of it gets put into the record."—Maris Kreizman, The Maris Review

"A striking and singular first novel about an unnamed curator gripped by visions of their medieval subject . . . It's masterful."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Astonishingly layered, [a] quietly witty and compassionate debut... Readers may find themselves drawn to rereading right away.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Exquisite… A banquet for those with insatiable curiosity who seek meaning among shadows.”—Foreword Reviews, starred review

"Brings a poet's mettle to one of fiction's central concerns: the scant difference between this moment, the one that just passed, and a moment from 500 years ago."—The Walrus

“May We Feed the King stood out for its crisp, cool prose, and its playfully enigmatic approach to storytelling. With a poet's eye for detail and a keen sense of humour, Perry grapples with the slippery nature of memory and the burden of power.”—Bea Carvalho, Waterstones Head of Books

"Perry combines effortless exactitude with canny ambiguity to create a novel that is always as stimulating as it is enchanting. May We Feed the King is a rare achievement, I absolutely loved it."—Claire-Louise Bennett

"A gemlike take on historical fiction, moving between a curator who creates luscious and historically accurate tableaux in historic buildings, and the life of a reluctant king. It's intricate and uncanny and beautiful."—Sophie Mackintosh

"I loved this book very much, I know I will return to it and anything else Perry writes, there is magic here."—Daisy Johnson

"The historical fiction I have always wanted to read. Surreal and dreamlike... With an eye on the tiny, overlooked details of worlds long gone, this book felt like something hidden come to life - what is real, and what is true, and in the middle of all that, what really matters?"—Jessie Burton

"Meditative, compelling and intricate as a puzzle box - I found myself turning it over and over, admiring and wrong footed and dazzled."—Kiran Millwood Hargrave

"May We Feed The King floored me with the precision of its emotional insights and eccentric view of history-as-narrative... A sort of perfect snow globe, presenting a decadent world in miniature that surprises us with the depth of its reflections on power, yearning and loneliness."—A. K. Blakemore

"An artfully told, dizzyingly detailed descent into the murkiness of the past. Perry's prose is needle-sharp, lush as a feast. A book to devour."—Lucy Steeds

"May We Feed the King is exquisite, every detail, object, image, and feeling startlingly precise, illuminated from within. I entered the novel easily, and, once there, the world outside its pages faded blissfully away. It was the only place I wanted to be, the only book I wanted to be reading."—Amina Cain

"An arresting and daringly imaginative meditation on history, duty, masculinity and the stories we are drawn to. In gorgeously measured prose, the novel sets the historical alongside the fabular to conjure a world of intrigue and detail."—Daisy Lafarge

"Funny, sharply sad and full of real love. Majestic."—Ben Pester

"A beautifully crafted novel of mise en scènes. Perry blurs the lines between historical narrative and modern narrator, shining a light on the inescapable and murky unknowability that permeates how we tell stories of past and present."—Susannah Dickey