My Good Bright Wolf

Reviews

“Spellbinding imagination and sizzling prose . . . Described with such tenderness and poetry . . . [My Good Bright Wolf is] important literature: for women, for trauma survivors, for those struggling with mental health and good issues, and for vulnerable people searching in the dark for their power.”
—Dina Nayeri, The Guardian

“There’s something beautifully wild and dangerous about this book . . . An audacious attempt to reconcile the life of the body with that of the mind . . . My Good Bright Wolf is a howl both exquisitely anguished and profound. It’s further proof that Moss is a towering figure in the contemporary literary landscape.”
—Lucy Scholes, The Telegraph

“At dramatic moments [Moss’s] approach reveals something that seems to approach truth, in all its messy, kaleidoscopic glory.”
—Emily Gould, New York

“[Moss] writes with such force and imagination . . . Heartbreaking . . . [My Good Bright Wolf deepens] our understanding of how our bodies are ourselves, and how we may live—allow ourselves to live—in this hard world in our soft and beautiful flesh.”
—Erica Wagner, The New Statesman

“A stirring and singular achievement.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[My Good Bright Wolf] presents a compelling portrait of a sensitive, deeply intelligent woman struggling to reconcile a difficult emotional past with the misogyny that tainted the social and intellectual environments she inhabited. Rich, complex reading.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A dark, revelatory and an observational masterpiece, littered with sentences you want to read again and again.”
—Chloe Gray, iNews

“Sarah Moss’s gorgeous puzzle box of a memoir, My Good Bright Wolf, runs far and fast through the heart of memory, our love of stories, and the beautiful blur between the two.”
—Samantha Hunt, author of The Unwritten Book

“In this searching, scorching work, Sarah Moss relays the echoes of that malevolent choir—parents, teachers, ministers, doctors, history, one’s own skewed mind—the one that asks how dare you: how dare you need, how dare you hunger, how dare you believe you deserve. But here, Moss finds another voice more powerful, one that howls instead a bodily song of instinct, survival, and strength.”
—Nina MacLaughlin, author of Wake, Siren

“Devastating, funny, and full of brilliant insights. This is a brave book, but more than that it is generous. It has made me think about how incredibly porous we all are: to our families, to society, to culture, to each other.”
—Melissa Harrison, author of At Hawthorn Time

“Defiant in its anger and humor, My Good Bright Wolf is a compulsive and compelling story of how hard it is to break free of the punishing narratives around women’s bodies and how easy it is to nearly lose yourself to them. And it is also a story of how words—painful and beautiful, wolf-sharp words—can be a way back.”
—Emilie Pine, author of Notes to Self

“An utterly original testimonial of great candor and eloquence, hope and redemption. An unflinching take on feminist and literary history, the indignities of illness, and the vulnerabilities of childhood.”
—Gavin Francis, author of Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence