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A raw and powerful memoir, a story of a life lived with trauma, written by an author who is very well known for her fiction, and who cannot resist playing a trick or two on the reader, beginning with her identification as a perhaps inevitably “unreliable” narrator. The author’s memoir is also aided by some unique and interesting literary tools, including a cacophany of mostly jeering voices from her ancestral past, and what she will describe as her own “good bright wolf” — a metaphorical creature, loyal and always available, that the author can send back to assist, inform, or simply reassure her past struggling selves as they are revealed to us.

Packed with literary insights and discussions, these ideas are as foundational in the development of the author’s identity as they are critical to her escape from her truly appalling and abusive family life, ceaselessly pounded by the dual strikes of brutal and misguided Puritanism, and her mothers own conflicted entanglement of motherhood and patriarchy.

I found this book impossible to put down. As her parents lay down the gut-wrenching and sociopathic tracks that will define her upbringing (in their role as “gods and monsters”) the author cannot, unfortunately, escape unscathed, (no spoilers here) channeling her neglect, shame, alienation, lack of control and fear into an eating disorder — anorexia — which will become a life-threatening obsession.

“the less you eat, the more you want food and the more you want food, the more frightening food becomes.”

An eye-opening and incredibly tragic journey into one woman’s enforced descent into trauma, her resilience in finding a path to recovery, and her life-long battle to stay healthy — despite a familial, political and social structure aligned with just the opposite outcome.

A great big thank you to #Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.