Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was A Girl: A Memoir

Product Description
A New York Times Editors’ Choice and Best Book of the Year at TIME, Esquire, Amazon, Kirkus, and Electric Literature
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.
Review
"Bold, unsettling, and timely. . . . A reckoning with injustice."
―
Laurie Halse Anderson, TIME
"Gorgeous, harrowing, heartbreaking."
―
Carmen Maria Machado, Bustle
"About violence and forgiveness, about friendship and the unwanted title of victim, about digging deeper and deeper to seek answers."
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The New York Times Book Review
"A cuttingly funny meta-meditation on her own pain in the context of #MeToo."
―
O, The Oprah Magazine
"A remarkably nuanced account of the complicated and confusing emotions that surface when your rapist is someone you knew and trusted."
―
The Cut
"About how important it is to speak about these oft-silenced experiences that cause so many to feel ashamed, scared, and alone."
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NPR
"A stunning work of meta nonfiction. . . . Vanasco’s narrative pushes far past the flattened media narrative of Me Too and asks uncomfortable questions about how to talk about rape culture, toxic masculinity and gender, justice, and resilience."
―
Shondaland
"Perhaps the most important book of the season."
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Esquire
"Utterly brilliant."
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Book Riot
"Thought-provoking, unmooring, and haunting."
―
NYLON
About the Author
Jeannie Vanasco is the author of
The Glass Eye: A Memoir (Tin House Books, 2017). Her work has appeared in
The Believer, the
New York Times Modern Love,
Tin House, and elsewhere. She lives in Baltimore and is an assistant professor at Towson University.
Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is her second book.