My Good Bright Wolf: A Memoir

Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. 

Best Book of 2024: Kirkus Reviews, The Independent, and the New York Public Library.

Here, with My Good Bright Wolf, Sarah Moss takes on the rules of girlhood, the lessons from the fables of being small and quiet and controlled—and uses them to investigate memory, self-control, privilege, scarcity, parents, love.

A girl must watch her figure but never be vain. She must be intelligent but never a know-it-all. She must be ambitious if she’s clever—but not in a way that shows. She must cook and sew and make do and mend. She must know (but never say) that these skills are, in some fundamental way, flawed and frivolous—feminine. Girls must stay small, even as they grow. Women must show restraint.

And yet. In books, in the landscape of imagination, a girl can run free.

Through narratives of women and food, second-wave feminism and post-war puritanism, and her own challenges with a healthcare system that discounts the experiences of those it ought to serve, Moss seeks truth in the stories we tell ourselves and others. A body and a mind, though working hard together, can be at odds. And yet. In books, in the landscape of imagination, a girl can run free.

“As a teen, Moss took refuge in novels … feminist-inflected analyses … She remembers her mother and father as the ‘gods and monsters’ who dominated her girlhood …” — Kirkus Reviews

“Moss’s language has a dark, headlong allure … 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.” — The New Yorker

“An unflinching memoir about childhood, food, books, and our ability to see, become, and protect ourselves.” — Goodreads summary