Surprise, surprise, I’ve read another book by Sarah Moss! I’ve mentioned so many times how much I love her fiction writing (see Ghost Wall and Summerwater.) When her memoir, My Good Bright Wolf, was released, I added it to my Christmas list. I have excellent form for asking for or receiving books for Christmas, and taking until the following Christmas to read them. Case in point: The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin. Received Christmas 2023, began reading Christmas 2024 and was the first book in completed in 2025. My Good Bright Wolf received Christmas 2025, began reading 7th December 2025. I’ve squeaked in before the new year!
My Good Bright Wolf recalls Moss’s childhood and the effects her upbringing have had on her formative years and adult life. In its early stages it feels quite experimental. Moss openly acknowledges that memory is fallible and the one person’s memory of an experience can greatly differ from another person’s perspective. We see this with the interjection throughout of an internal voice or inner critic, that challenges lots of Moss’s memories. Or perhaps it’s a chorus of protesting voices from family, friends, colleagues. Her family are given names. Her father is the Owl, her mother, the Jumbly Girl, and her brother, Angel Boy. I would love to know the creative idea behind that decision. Does it create distance for her as a writer, or cast a fictional or protective veil over the personal detail?
Eating Disorder
The most interesting part of My Good Bright Wolf for me, was reading about her experience of anorexia. Her parents’ obsession with her weight during childhood, and her steadfast resolve to prove her worth by controlling her eating, have had an incredibly serious impact on her life. As someone that has a complex relationship with food and eating, I am interested in reading the experiences of others. It was one of the reasons I picked up The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman.
Sarah Moss is such a talented writer and fiercely intelligent. In the grip of anorexia, she cannot write fiction. In one of her worse relapses, she visits A&E and is admitted for medical and psychiatric care during the COVID crisis in 2020. Her body is showing signs of multiple organ failure, and she tries to refuse intravenous drips in case they contain sugar. She comes very close to being sectioned.
Her drive to want to work and to write is both an angel and a devil on her shoulder. To be able to write fiction, she must be able to stick to her meal plan and be of a weight that her body and brain can creatively function. However, her book tours and writing commissions all too often put her in the path of relapse.
Write What You Know
As I read My Good Bright Wolf, I thought I might have spotted some influences in her fiction. Ghost Wall has a difficult childhood and father figure. Summerwater features a female runner, while The Fell’s main character Kate is a hiker (Moss runs and hikes a lot.) Her latest book Ripeness is set in Italy, where Moss took a writing placement in recent years. They are all very small details, and quite possibly of no significance, but having read lots of her fiction, I felt I could join up dots of inspiration drawn from the life experiences I read about in My Good Bright Wolf, and I enjoyed making those possible connections.
Memoir Writing
I’ve mentioned before that I don’t often review memoirs on here. This is only my second memoir review this year after Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan. My Good Bright Wolf is a challenging read, both stylistically and by the nature of its content. When I read Matthew Perry’s memoir Friends, Lovers and The Big Terrible Thing, I was challenged by the numerous relapses of his addiction. Similarly here, it is challenging to read the relapses in anorexia. You are forced to confront the incredibly complex and difficult nature of such a horrible and dangerous mental illness and the grip it has on someone’s mind. That said, it is good to be challenged and gain more understanding of it, which I felt that I did. It’s a very brave piece of writing.
