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New York Times Editors' Choice | Winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Nonfiction | Paris Review Staff Pick | Rumpus Book Club Pick | Amazon's pick for one of the 20 best books of the year
A Best Book of 2019 at Kirkus, TIME, Esquire, Feminist Book Club, Electric Lit, Book Riot, and more. “Bold, unsettling, timely . . . critically important . . . [Vanasco] has created a reckoning with injustice told in real time.” – Laurie Halse Anderson, TIME "It’s hard to overstate the importance of this gorgeous, harrowing, heartbreaking book.” – Carmen Maria Machado, Bustle Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides—after fourteen years of silence—to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person. Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act? Jeannie interviews Mark, exploring how rape has impacted his life as well as her own. Unflinching and courageous, Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl is part memoir, part true crime record, and part testament to the strength of female friendships—a recounting and reckoning that will inspire us to ask harder questions, push towards deeper understanding, and continue a necessary and long overdue conversation. |
