Description

A memoir 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. 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.