My Good Bright Wolf
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An unflinching memoir about childhood, food, books, and our ability to see, become, and protect ourselves. My Good Bright Wolf is a memoir about thinking and reading, eating and not eating, privilege and scarcity, the relationships that form us and the long tentacles of childhood. Pushing at the boundaries of memoir writing, Sarah Moss investigates contested memories of a girlhood with embattled, distracted parents, loving grandparents, and teachers who said she would never learn to read. Then, by the time she was a teenager, Moss developed a dangerous and controlling relationship with food, an illness that continued to affect her as an adult, despite her professional and personal success. In My Good Bright Wolf, this bright light of contemporary literature explores the trap of postwar puritanism and second-wave feminism, the narratives of women and food that we absorb through our childhoods and adulthoods, and the ways in which our health-care system continues to discount the experiences of women, minorities, and anyone suffering from mental illness. With her characteristic commitment to finding the truths in stories, Moss examines what she thought and still thinks, what she read and still reads, and what she did—and still does—with her hardworking body and her furiously turning mind.
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CW: disordered eating, suicidal ideationFever dream memoir by British novelist Sarah Moss, with a focus on her lifelong struggle with anorexia. I was immediately hooked by the book's first section, which inserts harsh self-rebuttals of Moss's own memories as they are related. Yes, her parents were neglectful and often cruel, but the inner voice accuses Moss of being an ungrateful liar, a privileged white woman from a solidly middle class family who does not deserve to complain. It's harsh but oh so relatable. As the book goes on, the self-critical voice appears less and less often, and a protective wolf familiar takes its place, encouraging Moss to look back and allow her younger self some grace. The book's darkness is also balanced by Moss's academic but accessible thoughts on [b:Little Women 1934 Little Women Louisa May Alcott https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562690475l/1934.SY75.jpg 3244642], [b:Jane Eyre 10210 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557343311l/10210.SY75.jpg 2977639], [b:Little House on the Prairie 77767 Little House on the Prairie (Little House, #3) Laura Ingalls Wilder https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1559209202l/77767.SX50.jpg 2884161], and other books of her youth (and mine). Having been inside the author's troubled mind, I'm not sure I want to read any of her critically acclaimed novels, but this memoir was somehow a perfect mix of disturbing and hopeful.
