My Good Bright Wolf

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What to expect

Winner of Scotland's Non-Fiction Book of the Year

'Extraordinary . . . Moss is a towering figure in the contemporary literary landscape' - The Daily Telegraph
‘Devastating, funny . . . a brave and important book’ - Melissa Harrison
'Full of daring . . . revelatory' - The Observer
'An observational masterpiece' - The i

A memoir about thinking and reading, eating and denying your body food, about the relationships that form us and the long tentacles of childhood.

In the household of Sarah Moss's childhood she learnt that the female body and mind were battlegrounds. 1970s austerity and second-wave feminism came together: she must keep herself slim but never be vain, she must be intelligent but never angry, she must be able to cook and sew and make do and mend, but know those skills were frivolous. Clever girls should be ambitious but women must restrain themselves. Women had to stay small.

Years later, her self-control had become dangerous, and Sarah found herself in A&E. The return of her teenage anorexia had become a medical emergency, forcing her to reckon with all that she had denied her hard-working body and furiously turning mind.

My Good Bright Wolf navigates contested memories of girlhood, the chorus of relentless and controlling voices that dogged Sarah’s every thought, and the writing and books in which she could run free. Beautiful, audacious, moving and very funny, this memoir is a remarkable exercise in the way a brain turns on itself, and then finds a way out.

From Sarah Moss, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Summerwater, My Good Bright Wolf is a memoir like no other.

'Without a doubt, one of our greatest living writers' - Katherine May

'Compulsive and compelling' - Emilie Pine

‘Confronts what it means to be a woman trying to find a way to be’ - Jan Carson

'Moss writes so compassionately about human frailty while her own work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be' - The Times

Critics Review

There’s something beautifully wild and dangerous about this book . . . 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
I've never read anything quite like My Good Bright Wolf. Part memoir, part confessional, part dark and feverish fairytale, Moss explores her subject matter with characteristic attentiveness and unflinching honesty. This book invites the reader to step into the narrator's oftentimes uncomfortable shoes and, in doing so, confront what it means to be a woman, an artist, a human being, trying to find a way to be.
Jan Carson, author of The Raptures
A counterspell to the dark enchantment of anorexia, and an utterly original testimonial of great candour and eloquence, hope and redemption. An unflinching take on feminist and literary history, the indignities of illness, and the vulnerabilities of childhood. Sarah Moss does it again.
Gavin Francis
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. That's why this book is important: it asks us to take responsibility for our impact on each other.
Melissa Harrison
Defiant in its anger and humour, 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
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
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
A stirring and singular achievement
Publishers Weekly
A thought-provoking, tender midlife memoir . . . a brilliant mind
The Guardian
An observational masterpiece, littered with sentences you want to read again and again
The i
Brilliant . . . brave, worthy and fierce
The Irish Times
Full of daring . . . revelatory
The Observer
Sarah Moss brings her trademark subtlety and sense of the ominous to her harrowing memoir...[A] complex, textured story
The New York Times

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