I am not sure I enjoyed this book but it is very thought provoking and well written.
Playing on the idea of memory and how shared memories can differ between family members, it tells the story of a comfortable childhood that results in the writer developing an eating disorder. I found the book very uncomfortable to read but the details of a seventies childhood were uncanny similar to my own. Children don't have control over their lives and this shows through this section of the book.
I enjoyed the sections discussing literature and books. Really interesting.
I found the recurrence of the eating disorder in the writers adulthood hard to read. I did finish the book though and would urge others to do so. The list at the end of the book of further reading and listening is great.

Many thanks to the Picador team, @netgalley and @panmacmillan for this advance copy in return for my honest review.

Sarah Moss is a go-to author for me and her new memoir does not disappoint. In an often searing account of her early years, Moss describes her difficult relationship with her liberal parents who have a very light handed approach to parenting. Food is a luxury commodity and Moss is often left hungry. She develops an eating disorder in her teens as her relationship with her parents becomes more fractious.

This is a visceral often uncomfortable read. I admire the authors honesty in describing the extent of self loathing she felt for her body and how this affected her on an ongoing basis throughout her life. At times hilarious, Moss plays with the concept of reality v contested memory. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. 4 stars from me!

Published 29 August 2024. This is a very powerful memoir about the author's relationship with anorexia. She writes about herself and her parents who she refers to as the Owl and the Jumbly Girl and as a parent, I could find love there. Their style of parenting is to give their daughter a life of freedom where there was no real expectations. Holidays were outdoors, hiking, mountain-climbing with very few supplies because , of course, she wasn't going to waste away. There was no processed food - no 'muck' in the house and even from a young age our author could sew and knit and make her own clothes. But she was always told not to over-eat. The Owl constantly snaps at her mother for getting fat, and snaps at our author if he sees her taking too much. And so she takes control the only way she knows how - by not eating. Throughout there is an almost parent voice telling her that her memories are wrong. And, although she is terrified of dogs, she calls upon a wolf to be her comfort. There are really hard to read sections in here, and even as an adult her need to take control resurfaces. I also enjoyed her deep dives into the book that meant a lot to her - Jane Eyre, Swallows and Amazons to name two - I enjoyed the way she applies feminist analysis to them. She says this is not a 'misery memoir' because she had the ballet lessons, a comfortable home and a parent who had a good job. Nevertheless, her struggles with her body image and food do make this a book that should not be taken lightly.

While I cannot say that I liked every sentence and all aspects in this book, this was a thought-provoking, honest and well-written book.
Moss’ style is meticulous and appeals to me, and the themes and topics she reflects on in this memoir (not an easy read) are important.

A brave, honest and very powerful memoir about hunger and food , mental health, feminism, books, thinking and reason. I love Moss’s novels and this is as great and poetic as ever.
Thank you Picador/Netgalley UK for the ARC.

I am a huge fan of Sarah Moss's previous novels. My favourite of her books, Ghost Wall and Cold Earth, wonderfully capture the complexities of human relationships and underlying darkness. Reading her memoir, My Good Bright Wolf, helps to understand how Moss developed not only as a person but a writer of such fiction. As with all her work, the writing is mesmeric and beautifully evocative. Whether she's describing her childhood home or a Swiss village, it is easy for the reader to imagine themselves there along with Moss.

I also particularly loved the sections of the book where Moss looks back at the books that influenced her as a child. Like Moss, I grew up adoring children's classics such as Swallows and Amazons and Little Women and can still enjoy them as comfort reads, whilst acknowleding their problematic elements. I loved how she is able to examine these books both from her childhood perspective but also through the critical eye of an adult reader. Unfortunately, I don't think she is quite as successful at retaining perspective when she looks at her troubled relationship with her parents. She does try to acknowledge that they may well remember things differently but there is still a palpable hurt and bitterness as she recounts much of her childhood. Although elements of their behaviour was undoubtedly cruel, the use of nicknames depersonalises in a way that I didn't feel particularly comfortable with (especially her brother, who she refers to as Angel Boy).

The latter section of the book was incredibly powerful and I think Moss succeeds here in keeping a calmer, more objective gaze as she describes the re-emergence of her eating disorder in adulthood. She movingly captures her own mental struggles during this time as well as the sometimes unreasonable and infantilising attitude towards hospitalised patients, particularly during the Covid outbreak. Moss's skills as a writer really come to the fore here and it is impossible not to be moved by her account of this period of her life.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

My Good Bright Wolf is a brave and uncomfortable memoir of life with an eating disorder, and how our childhood shapes the person we become.

As ever, Moss' prose is elegant and lucid, shot through with bright bolts of poetry. But it feels like a memoir under seige; Moss' own narrative voice battles the voices in her head that tell her she's wrong, she's not remembering right or she's lying. Memory is fluid and fallible, and we all have events in our childhood that we remember differently to others who were present. And if your core memories become uncertain, then it becomes all the more difficult to challenge the other voices in your head - like those telling you not to eat.

Written with unflinching honesty, My Good Bright Wolf is a demanding and devastating read.

This is a very compelling book but should perhaps come with a health warning because it is a very hard read. I have greatly enjoyed all the other books by Sarah Moss - she writes beautifully and her characters are finely delineated. In this memoir she turns her focus on herself and i was greatly saddened to learn that the young woman whose work I so admire has had such challenges to overcome. Her parents - who she names the Owl and the Jumbly Girl - are the most selfishly appalling pair I've encountered on the page since reading Suzanne Heywood's "Wavewalker" - and in he first part of the memoir which covers her childhood a parental voice often interrupts to contradict her account, a clever way of emphasising that different people will have different recollections of the same events - different stories, as Moss reminds us at the start of the book - and, while presenting a plausibly different perspective, adding further to the perception of parental emotional neglect.
I particularly liked the digressions about her reading, especially those books that have meant a great deal to her, and her close analysis of those meanings: her formidable scholarship sustains her through many of her difficulties, she understands that she must eat to nourish her brain to continue to think clearly but this conflicts with her focus on managing the impact of food on her body.
Her gradual fade into severe anorexia is chronicled in terrible detail: her internal rationalisations for not eating and her feelings about her body are set out with brutal clarity. Interestingly, she writes about her fear of dogs but chooses a wolf as a metaphor for comfort.
This writing is very brave indeed, far from the solipsism of the genre of "misery memoir". Moss is her own severest critic. I have given it 5 stars but would warn that you need to be feeling strong to read it.

Sarah Moss's memoir, My Good Bright Wolf, is as electrically written and charged as her novels. The writing explodes across the page like fireworks. This is not a usual memoir, it is not all warts and all, beginning to now - it is mostly chronological, but it takes detours, takes its time to explore literature, memory, depression, and upbringing.

This will not be an easy read for everyone - some might become frustrated at Moss' refusal to confirm to genre norms - but it is ultimately a fascinating read, and at times rewarding. It does leave you longing at times to learn more of her thinking on certain ideas - mainly to do with her reading and interpretation of classic literature that shaped her - Arthur Ransome, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Sylvia Plath - though I suspect at some point in the future such a book from her could easily exist.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed reading this - I wolfed it down in one sitting - and was a reminder again of how talented a writer Moss is.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC. Moss writes with a haunting, poetic style that is beautiful to read but something overcomplicated - but covers the ground her life wisely.

I always look forward to the next thing Sarah Moss writes and have read and enjoyed all her books and memoirs written to date. But this ..... what exactly is this supposed to be? To me .... and it must be me — something that I don't understand — it reads as though it's a half-finished manuscript that she sent of to the publishers by mistake and they, because she is a well-establish author, have chosen to publish it. Why??

I'm sorry for the difficult childhood Sarah Moss experienced. Many of us did. I can thoroughly sympathise since my own abominable childhood still haunts me half a century later. I would have appreciated reading a competently written account of those awful years. I 'get' Moss' need to write about them, but the way in which she has gone about it just isn't for me. Sorry!

Many thanks to the publishers and to Netgalley for the ARC.

I always enjoy Sarah Moss’s writing and ‘My Good Bright Wolf’ is up there with the best of her work. This is such a brave and unusual memoir that I know it will stay with me for a long time. Moss writes unflinchingly about the ways in which her childhood has shaped her whilst also addressing the conundrum that we can never be entirely reliant on our memories to get at the truth.
Whilst it is clear that the narrator suffers from relatively affluent neglect as a child, alongside constant blunt reminders that she is, like her mother, too fat, Moss never drifts into self-pity. Whilst, at times, I am outraged on her behalf – she never is. Looking back on her childhood self, Moss dares to question the diktats of her parents whilst also trying to make sense of their parenting. Why is it wrong to care about home comforts? She remembers her childhood friend Lulu whose, ‘family weren’t as good as your family because they kept their small house so warm you didn’t need a jumper, called their dinner ‘tea’ and ate it – processed muck from a box – on their laps in front of the gas fire and the television, another box producing processed muck.’ She also remembers feeling accepted at Lulu’s house and basking in the family’s kindness – a contrast to the atmosphere at home.
This is not a misery memoir – Moss is at pains to remind her narrative self and her readers that she has grown up with many privileges. She writes, ‘It has been hard, writing this, not to be defensive, not to be forever saying how lucky you are, how loudly you wish to acknowledge that there can have been no serious suffering in a childhood of ballet lessons and private school, in an adult life of home-owning and secure employment…’ This is not a misery memoir, and yet … Moss has suffered some terrible episodes of poor mental health, seen, not least, through her struggles with anorexia which, at times, has completely overwhelmed her capacity to do anything more than to focus on the art of starving.
I shall be urging everyone to read ‘My Good Bright Wolf’. Whilst it is clearly a book which speaks to women of all ages, it is not just for women. It is also a contemplation on much else, including parenthood, friendship, the creative process, and the importance of literature. Highly recommended.
My thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

I wanted to love it but found it virtually unreadable. The style didn’t at all appeal. Perhaps it’s me at fault, rather than Ms Moss.

Devastating work. Powerful, poetic, and stripped down to the bone of what you can tolerate as a reader, which is a magnificent achievement given the subject matter. This is hard to read and there were times when I just had to put this down and walk away from it. My daughter was diagnosed with an eating disorder and so much of this writing connected me to dark, difficult places. The beauty of this writing is that it is real. This is it. This is how it is. In the shifting negotiation between what you know and what you feel, what you remember and what you think you remember, what you believe and how you take that out on yourself, this is true. I've read a lot of stuff around eating disorders and this feels like the truest thing I've ever read. I am in awe of the author for what she has done here. It's brutal and beautiful.

Sarah Moss’s gripping memoir of her mental health struggles, UK release 29 August, is creative and affecting.

“This is a memoir in that it’s an account of what I remember. Memory is fallible.”

Moss initially uses a chorus to vividly reflect this, scoffing at inconsistencies and untruths – “You’re getting this from films, you have no idea” – playing down her emotions, accusing her of attention-seeking. This exasperated, gainsaying, voice stays with us throughout, but the source of it shifts tellingly.

She recalls active, intellectual parents with no time for the unhealthy inane 1980s, making her curious about other families, who seemed warmer, closer. These families eat fish fingers, food forbidden at home and which when visiting she declines, fearing to be thought greedy and weak. In the classic books she compulsively re-reads she’s told that self-denial, for women and girls, is a sign of “goodness”, so it’s easier just to be “good”, politely refuse the food, and deal with the hunger pains.

Moss provides such a vivid and painful insight in to the effects of her parents’ cold practicality. It left her feeling undervalued, loved perhaps, but uncared for and admonished constantly. We are with her through her school years, her friendships, and her initial battles with mental health and eating disorders. In more recent years her thoughts are filled with reprimands and compulsions, leading to a complete breakdown of her health. In care, she’s considered “not compliant” for not following her eating plan. If she could follow an eating plan, she argues, she wouldn’t be here...

Moss bravely shows the disjoint between her high level of privilege and her low level of contentment – what right do I have to be this distressed when others have so much more cause? In trying to understand this she foregrounds the pernicious effects of class, race, and gender politics.

This is a book about her, rather than her conditions. Even though we feel their ravages the heart and soul of this book is the real Sarah Moss who suffered and persisted, and who continues to have hope.

Moving and exquisitely written.

My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss is an interesting and relatable memoir. Reading it has made me want to try out some of her fictional work as well.

I adore Sarah Moss' fiction and was bowled over by this extraordinary memoir.

From the start it was clear that this was no ordinary life. The style is written once removed, with chunks of judgements emphasised by the use of the second person and passive tense. Moss was subjected to careless, disinterested parenting which, whilst giving her great freedoms, did not remove expectations of how she manged this and was perpetually found wanting. Love and care were completely absent and holidays were spent mountain walking or sailing without supplies as she wasn't going to "waste away".

But waste away is exactly what she did. Taking control by stopping eating and developing a lifelong eating disorder. Even then, "You are still too fat, you heard, It would be good if you wasted away. You applied yourself to the task"

It is common for parenting styles to swing between generations but it is assumed (by me anyway) that you learn along the way, adapting to your child's needs. This did not happen for Moss despite her "liberal" academic, feminist parents whose own needs trumped hers. It occurs to her toward the end of the book "..not for the first time, that the advantage of your upbringing was having little to miss, no home to pull you back"

I found reading this compulsive yet raw, distressing yet enlightening memoir stunning. It captured so clearly the true essence of her life and how she has used (and been hampered) by her experiences. Another Moss book to recommend.

Thank you to #NetGalley and #PanMacmillan for the opportunity to read and review

I haven't come across a masterclass in memoir-writing as compelling and refreshing as this since Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House. I made so many notes while reading it, not just because of the elegant, pellucid way in which Moss tells her story (to preserve in my notebook, little gems of language and expression), but also because of the many research directions it sent me in. I have enjoyed both Moss's fiction and non-fiction before, but I think this is her best. It also provides a sort of gloss for some aspects of her (or the narrator's, I should say) character that are hinted at in her previous work. Reading it is therapeutic, activating - in the sense of prompting me to look things up and write things down - and inspiring for thinking about how I would approach this genre. Not that I ever will, because this book has raised the bar!

A moving and thought provoking read. Moss’s writing, as always, is lucid and engaging, a perfect balancing act between difficult subjects lightened with flashes of humour.