My Good Bright Wolf hit devastatingly close to home. As both a writer and someone who has struggled with disordered eating, I felt Moss's exploration of her lifelong battle with anorexia in my bones - from her complex childhood with academic parents to her recent hospitalization during COVID. Throughout the memoir, a hectoring inner voice questions her memories and experiences, mirroring the cruel internal dialogue so familiar to anyone with disordered eating. Despite her sharp feminist critique and academic understanding of these issues, Moss candidly admits that intellectual awareness hasn't freed her from the disorder's grip - a truth that resonates all too painfully.

This came out earlier this fall, and is one of the most fascinating examples of memoir I’ve seen in a while. This is an autobiography by way of stylistic experiment that melds POV, dissociation, eating disorders, and the expectations of others and how they map onto the self and how we understand it. Hell of a book.

This was an interesting mixture of literary criticism,,mainly childhood classics and a story of the author’s anorexia and its roots in her childhood. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of Little Women as well as the ordeal of being hospitalized during the pandemic (which I can unfortunately relate to.

Absolutely incredible memoir! I found Sarah to be wildly unreliable but in the best way. I did find myself taking a while to read through, but overall really enjoyed

Award-winning author Sarah Moss unflinchingly explores her ongoing struggles with anorexia nervosa in this complex memoir.
Sarah Moss has been afflicted with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa since her pre-teen years but was able to keep the condition under some control for decades. During this period she completed a D.Phil (equivalent to an American Ph.D.) in English literature at Oxford University, became a successful professor and lecturer, and wrote several well-regarded novels (including Night Waking and Ghost Wall), among many other personal and professional achievements. As her disorder recurred, however, she found she was unable to write fiction, and so turned to setting down her experiences as a sort of therapy. Her memoir My Good Bright Wolf is the result.

Laid out in three parts, Moss's account plays with various narrative styles. The first and longest section is relayed in the second person as she talks about her childhood and what she believes influenced her eating disorder. At times the passages read like a dark fairy tale (she refers to her parents as the Owl and Jumbly Girl, and her younger brother as Angel Boy). It's here that her wolf is born, a "reverse ghost … a present voice to haunt the past" — a being she imagines she can send back in time to support her childhood self. This section will likely resonate most strongly with readers; like so many who grew up in the latter half of the twentieth century, Moss's identity revolved around her weight. "You had never encountered an adult woman who was not on a diet," she writes, "nor one who was thin enough to be allowed to eat what she wanted." Adding to the pressure was praise at home when she lost weight and condemnation when she didn't. Her father weighed her often ("[A]nd the numbers told him how bad you were, how many times you'd eaten cakes and sweets at a birthday party") and used Moss's weight loss to bully his overweight wife ("[D]o you really want your nine-year-old showing more self-control than you?"). The author only gets healthy after winning a scholarship to Oxford and escaping her home life. The account is horrifying, especially when viewed by today's standards for parenting and current awareness of body-shaming.

The second part reverts to a third-person telling of Moss's first relapse. During the COVID lockdown she once again stopped eating and became so ill her organs were in imminent danger of failing. Refusing both a dextrose tablet and an intravenous drip ("If there's sugar in the drip, she said, I don't want it") she was hospitalized for months in a psychiatric ward. There's more emotional distance in this section, and although her predicament draws in the reader — especially when she isn't permitted to leave the facility — her account doesn't feel as personal.

Finally, part three returns to the second person and contains short chapters that describe the author's various relapses over the years. These paragraphs are more recent, and so she is better able to convey the mental anguish of knowing what she needs to do to get healthy but being unable to do it, at one point contemplating suicide. Once again, the account feels intimate, and her pain is palpable.

Moss does close with a glimmer of hope, as one of her friends tells her, "You have to make safety in the place where you'd like to be." The reader is left feeling that she's moving toward healing but that she may never be completely free from her disorder.

Moss acknowledges that memory is fallible, and that her account differs from what others remember. In fact, throughout the narrative a second, critical voice interjects, constantly disputing her recollections and calling her a liar ("Isn't it convenient that you found a way to earn a living by making things up?" the voice asks her). It's an interesting take on the unreliable narrator; the reader realizes there are two conflicting accounts here, and it's likely neither is completely true.

Books also play an important role in Moss's development; reading is both a refuge for her as well as an unhealthy reinforcement: "Jo March in Little Women … made you feel inadequate because you did like to knit and sew and cook … and you would have liked a frilled sunbonnet." Unfortunately, long passages in which the author discusses the plots of several classics, pointing out the various ways female characters are portrayed and how these images could be harmful to some, cause the pace to sag a bit, even though she does eventually bring the narrative back to her own experiences.

I confess that memoirs are a difficult genre for me; one needs to be remarkable in either its content or its writing style for me to fully appreciate it. My Good Bright Wolf succeeds on both counts. Moss's prose is gorgeous, bordering on poetic, and her account is both troubling and harrowing. I highly recommend it for most readers, including young adults who may be struggling with their own body image issues.

My good bright wolf is a powerful biography, unlike anything I've read before.
Through lyrical and brutally honest prose, Sarah Moss recounts in the second-person voice the pressure and trauma of growing up in a puritanical family environment that was very focused on physical appearance. This conflicted relationship with her family is described through her relationship with food, which later reveals the diagnosis of anorexia that the author carries into her adult life.
It's difficult to categorise someone's personal experience, let alone the author's visceral and gut-wrenching experience. However, this is an important analysis of feminism, patriarchy and the expectations imposed on women and their bodies.
Although this is a beautiful biography, it can be triggering for some people, so I would draw attention to this aspect. For anyone who has or hasn't read Sarah Moss's books, I strongly recommend considering ‘My good bright wolf’ for future reading.
This was my first contact with Sarah Moss's writing, although I've had ‘Ghost Wall’ on my TBR for a long time - which made me want to read the book soon.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

My Good Bright Wolf was an excellent memoir. I really appreciated the imagery of her parents as owls and wolves, I liked the internal monologue responding to itself. It was vulnerable and raw and super interesting.

A raw and powerful memoir, a story of a life lived with trauma, written by an author who is very well known for her fiction, and who cannot resist playing a trick or two on the reader, beginning with her identification as a perhaps inevitably “unreliable” narrator. The author’s memoir is also aided by some unique and interesting literary tools, including a cacophany of mostly jeering voices from her ancestral past, and what she will describe as her own “good bright wolf” — a metaphorical creature, loyal and always available, that the author can send back to assist, inform, or simply reassure her past struggling selves as they are revealed to us.

Packed with literary insights and discussions, these ideas are as foundational in the development of the author’s identity as they are critical to her escape from her truly appalling and abusive family life, ceaselessly pounded by the dual strikes of brutal and misguided Puritanism, and her mothers own conflicted entanglement of motherhood and patriarchy.

I found this book impossible to put down. As her parents lay down the gut-wrenching and sociopathic tracks that will define her upbringing (in their role as “gods and monsters”) the author cannot, unfortunately, escape unscathed, (no spoilers here) channeling her neglect, shame, alienation, lack of control and fear into an eating disorder — anorexia — which will become a life-threatening obsession.

“the less you eat, the more you want food and the more you want food, the more frightening food becomes.”

An eye-opening and incredibly tragic journey into one woman’s enforced descent into trauma, her resilience in finding a path to recovery, and her life-long battle to stay healthy — despite a familial, political and social structure aligned with just the opposite outcome.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.

*** four and a half shiny stars

My Good Bright Wolf is a memoir. An unconventional memoir in that while there is an arc from childhood to adulthood, it's all told through a filter of Moss's relationship with food. With a baby brother (referred to as "Angel Boy") and parents she calls "the Owl" and "the Jumbly Girl" who pretty much let her do her own thing, she was teased for her appearance (clothes, hair) a little more ruthlessly than usual for young kids. As a teenager her food issues turn into anorexia, which she carries through to her adult years.

There's a lot of exercise, measuring, restricting, timing, calorie analysis. There are hospitals. Moss doesn't hold back, going deep into those experiences, and this unique focus tells us a lot about her. I feel like I really got to know her, more so than if her book had followed a more familiar structure.

I enjoyed Moss's Ghost Wall and her writing is as layered and visceral in this new offering.

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the digital ARC.

Sarah Moss is one of my all-time favorite authors. I have read the majority of her backlist and can confidently say that My Good Bright Wolf is a big deviation from her previous works. Moss utilizes a unique poetic voice in her memoir which is divided into short chapters. These chapters recap memories and reflections and are told in the second person, with regular interjections from an inner voice, which constantly scrutinizes Moss’ retelling of events. I honestly found these interjections quite draining as a reader. I can understand this additional voice is intended to offer criticism and accountability, but it adds a layer of discomfort onto an already difficult stories and hard topic (i.e. mental illness, disordered eating, etc.).

I think it was incredibly brave for Moss to be so vulnerable in her memoir, and I am extremely impressed by what she has overcome in order to be such a successful and loved author. I also found it interesting to draw parallels between the different characters in her previous novels and her family members who likely served as inspiration.

All in all, I walked into this memoir expecting something closer to Names for the Sea, and didn’t completely click with the writing style. However, I am sure many readers will find this book valuable and see pieces of themselves in Moss’ life.

Thank you to FSG and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoyed the uniqueness of this book, the honest and vulnerability. It was unlike any book I've ever read and I appreciated her story, the layout and the metaphorical nature. It is evident the writer is gifted with words and expressing her emotions cleverly. I love the feminist undertones and the background on her childhood. Thank you so much Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss is a richly layered and haunting novel that examines the intersection of family, survival, and the wildness within. Set against the backdrop of a remote landscape, the story follows a family struggling with isolation and the untamed forces of nature, both external and internal. Moss’s prose is sharp and evocative, capturing the beauty and brutality of the natural world while delving into the emotional complexities of her characters. The novel explores themes of resilience and human fragility with a quiet, simmering tension that keeps the reader captivated. My Good Bright Wolf is a powerful and atmospheric read that lingers long after the last page is turned.

A fantastic memoir. I love the way she writes about everything, but especiallty the way she told her personal story. Writing about eating disorders can be so tricky to navigate and she did it beautifully.

Sarah Moss offers a memoir that feels both personal and universal, exploring the tangled relationship between food, body image, and the expectations placed on women. Growing up in the 1970s, Moss captures the pressures to conform—how society teaches girls to be ambitious yet small in every way.

What sets this memoir apart is her choice to write in the second person, which pulls you right into her experiences. It creates an almost palpable intimacy, allowing you to feel her struggles and the weight of those early messages about food and self-worth.

Moss doesn’t shy away from the darker moments, including her fraught relationship with her father, whom she refers to as the "owl." She deftly weaves in reflections on the literature that shaped her—works like *Jane Eyre* and stories of Laura Ingalls that both comforted and challenged her understanding of herself.

Her writing is rich with humor and heartbreak, making it a captivating read. This memoir is not just a recounting of a childhood; it’s a powerful meditation on resilience, identity, and the freedom that comes from telling your own story. Moss's voice is honest and compelling, making this an unforgettable book that lingers in your mind long after you’ve finished.

this was a spur of the moment netgalley request (thanks to roman clodia’s goodreads review) that i ended up being pleasantly surprised by! i haven’t read any other sarah moss books so i wasn’t sure what to expect. this is an unconventional memoir that plays with from, recounting moss’s struggle with anorexia and her fraught relationship with her parents, among other things.

moss acts as a bit of a time traveler here, examining the forces that shaped her parents and how that influenced their interactions with her. her parents’ own upbringings and society at the time caused them to repeat the neglect and uncaring behaviors that they themselves had faced. moss wonders if their rocky relationship is due to her not being the right child for them, which is a heartbreaking question to explore.

“You need a reverse ghost here, a present voice to haunt the past.”

another interesting question that brings the titular wolf to life - what would you say to your former-child self to protect them from future harm? moss arms the metaphorical wolf, inspired by a poem a friend shared with her, with advice for her younger self, wisdom that was hard won after the restriction of her childhood. she asks the wolf to go back to that young girl and reassure her that the struggles she faced with anorexia were not her fault, resulting in some really touching passages.

we also have the reoccurring concept of the unreliable narrator. an italicized voice questions moss’s memory and accuses her of making things up about her parents- what is the line between fact and fiction when you’re trying to recall traumatic events that happened to you 40 years ago? it was a really thought provoking way to explore the uncertainty moss feels as a novelist trying to write a memoir, due to her penchant for creating stories. i think it also allows her to accept that multiple things can be true at once, that there can be good experiences from her childhood, hidden amongst the bad ones.

examining little house on the prairie, little women, and jane eyre, among others, she utilizes literary criticism as a way to discuss privilege. throughout literary history, she shows how feminism has been used as a cover for racism, classism, and fatphobia. she also explores how her ability to choose sustainable consumption and to choose what kind of femininity she presents is a result of the privilege she has. i thought there was a lot of nuance in these sections of the book.

i think this was a really effective experimentation within the memoir genre. all of the elements she was working with really came together for me and kept me compelled. it’s a difficult read at times as she discusses her eating disorder and the hospitalization that was resulted from it in depth, so be mindful of that if you pick this one up. overall, though, it was unlike any other book i’ve read!

Devastating and powerful. A deeply personal and reflective memoir about food and disordered eating; femininity; literature. Moss weaves these different narratives together so seamlessly and paints a vivid picture of what it is like to live in a world that is so concerned about the way others look.
Choosing to write from the second-person narrative, I feel, is always such a risky move and it can be very hit or miss but Moss knocks it out of the park. Her second-person narrative invites readers in for a more visceral and intimate feel.

Can't get over how wonderful this book is.

Thank you Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review! Available 10/22/2024.

<i><blockquote>There is an art to the howl, to writing de profundis, in extremis. Art is not required to be tranquil.</i></blockquote>

If ever a line could sum up a book, it's this one above. Moss's memoir of a lifetime's struggles with body image and an extreme eating disorder is itself a howl of rage and a plea for... something - understanding, change, different interventions? - as well as a hand reaching out to all women who have or do suffer from all the emotions around eating and body image and generally being a woman taking up space in the world.

This is certainly art and definitely not tranquil - it's harrowing and painful reading, even while Moss' intelligent analysis of the issues and record of experience give this intellectual heft. This kind of split consciousness is woven into the text itself as the narrative voice is undercut by that critical inner consciousness that interrogates, mocks and dismisses the very story we're reading, using all those freighted terms so associated with femininity: lies, deception, nastiness, hysteria.

For me, there were two main axes along which this memoir treads: the difficult mother-daughter relationship between Moss and The Jumbly Girl; and Moss' anorexia. While the cutesy names for her parents ('Owl' her father, 'The Jumbly Girl' her mother) jarred consistently, the story of Moss' mother is itself fascinating: she was one of those women who was highly-educated at a time when that was still unusual who then found her doctorate was supposed to be put aside while she settled down into her predestined fate as wife and mother. So many of her questionable behaviours might be assigned to her own angry frustration but I still found it hard (as someone who also has a difficult mother, but that's another story) to accept the way she took out her rage on young Sarah, designating her 'fat', 'greedy' and 'out of control' when she was no more than 8 or 9. Given that this was Owl's own way of attempting to, at best, assert his dominance over his wayward wife, seeing this being passed down to their daughter is painful to witness.

The second strand is, of course, Moss' anorexia. Having read other books about women's struggles with eating, I'd still say this is probably the most harrowing and detailed, probably reflecting the acute intelligence of the writer who straddles that line of knowing the theory but is still unable to struggle out of the emotional and physical morass is which women's (and some men's) eating patterns and relationship with food is so deeply embedded. The accounts of Moss' iron control, of self-starvation to the point of organ failure and near death, of being on a psychiatric ward are both riveting and acutely distressing to read. With her academic hat on, Moss brings Foucault to bear on issues of medical surveillance and medical power structures, adding real weight to her account.

In so many ways this isn't just Moss' story but that, as she is acutely aware, of many women. The bounding structures of patriarchy, the tools of shame, the self-policing, even the accusations of hysteria and self-imposed sickness as if women's mental heath issues are not worthy of time and medical intervention, are all under scrutiny here. And by the end there is a tentative, provisional peace - but an awareness that the war may well not be completely settled.

I love Moss’s fiction but I had a hard time getting into this one - I don’t often read memoirs and picked this title by accident, thinking it was fiction when I saw their name. The writing is wonderful! Just not a genre I enjoy reading,

This is a memoir like no other…’about thinking and reading, eating and denying your body food, about privilege and scarcity, about the relationships that form us and the long tentacles of childhood.’

The author Sarah Moss is an inspiration to me. Her account of her 1970s childhood, so recognisable to me, and yet so very different, is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. Ever.

She writes of how the female body and mind are battlegrounds, and how she was brought up to believe clever girls like her could be ambitious, but women must stay small.
In every way.
Self control is paramount.
Until it becomes a medical emergency.

‘My Good Bright Wolf’ navigates contested memories of girlhood, the way our thoughts control us, and how writing gave Sarah freedom.

Beautifully written, moving and funny, this is a truly remarkable memoir.

There is just so much going on in the memoir! It is so much more than the story of a woman with an eating disorder. This book is told with so much detail and honesty, and it allows you to really feel the pain and emotion that Sarah suffers through. This story deals with women’s mental health, and how often it is disregarded in society as important, or even real. This is a must read!