Goodbye, Sweet Girl is heartbreaking, breathtaking in its scope, and urgently truthful in its harrowing and tender examination of when empathy fails—and when it wins.” — Los Angeles Review
“Kelly Sundberg’s lyrical, devastating 2014 essay about domestic violence, “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” made readers hold their collective breath. It’s now expanded into a full-length memoir about Sundberg’s husband, a man who was wonderful and violent at turns.” — Elle , The 30 Best Books to Read This Summer
“Goodbye Sweet Girl is a beautiful, devastating, and nuanced story of domestic abuse and escape that does true justice to the experiences of the victims without judgment or criticism of their choices.” — Bustle
“Goodbye, Sweet Girl , bursting with such heartfelt, beautifully crafted scenes, is a gift for those who’ve experienced the pain of growing up and out of abusive relationships and a guide for those who seek insight and understanding.” — New York Journal of Books
“Mesmerizing and poetic, Goodbye Sweet Girl is a harrowing, cautionary and ultimately redemptive tale that brilliantly illuminates one woman’s transformation.” — BookReporter
“Kelly Sundberg gives one of the most brave and beautifully written accounts of a marriage gone wrong in her memoir, Goodbye, Sweet Girl . Sundberg looks at both the tenderness and the violence of her abusive marriage, while also analyzing why women remain too long in dangerous relationships.” — Brooklyn Digest
“[Goodbye, Sweet Girl helps us] to better understand each of our nuances and complexities, how any of us rationalizes our decisions, and how we find the courage to take care of ourselves and to speak our truths…. [Sundberg writes] her truth with a deep sense of compassion.” — The Millions
“Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a story of domestic violence and survival, written by Kelly Sundberg, who experienced abuse at the hands of her husband. A strong and empowering memoir, the layers of Sundberg’s life are utterly inspiring.” — Women.com, 15 Awesome Books With Strong Female Protagonists
“A fierce, frightening, soulful reckoning— Goodbye, Sweet Girl is an expertly rendered memoir that investigates why we stay in relationships that hurt us, and how we survive when we leave them. Kelly Sundberg is a force. She has written the rare book that has the power to change lives.” — Christa Parravani, author of Her: A Memoir
“Reading Kelly Sundberg’s writing—fresh, luminous, spirited—is a pleasure second only to witnessing her decision to survive. Goodbye Sweet Girl is a meditation on what it takes to save your own life.” — Ariel Levy
“In this powerful debut memoir, Sundberg delivers a harrowing account of an abusive marriage and how she left it....Sundberg cogently ties together the painful chain of events in her life and the personal growth that resulted from it.” — Publishers Weekly
“Lyrical and taut, Goodbye, Sweet Girl provides readers with an honest and critical account of partner violence.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Goodbye, Sweet Girl , bursting with such heartfelt, beautifully crafted scenes, is a gift for those who’ve experienced the pain of growing up and out of abusive relationships and a guide for those who seek insight and understanding.
New York Journal of Books
Goodbye, Sweet Girl is heartbreaking, breathtaking in its scope, and urgently truthful in its harrowing and tender examination of when empathy fails—and when it wins.
Kelly Sundberg gives one of the most brave and beautifully written accounts of a marriage gone wrong in her memoir, Goodbye, Sweet Girl . Sundberg looks at both the tenderness and the violence of her abusive marriage, while also analyzing why women remain too long in dangerous relationships.
Kelly Sundberg’s lyrical, devastating 2014 essay about domestic violence, “It Will Look Like a Sunset,” made readers hold their collective breath. It’s now expanded into a full-length memoir about Sundberg’s husband, a man who was wonderful and violent at turns.
The 30 Best Books to Read This Summer Elle
Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a story of domestic violence and survival, written by Kelly Sundberg, who experienced abuse at the hands of her husband. A strong and empowering memoir, the layers of Sundberg’s life are utterly inspiring.
15 Awesome Books With Strong Female Protagonists Women.com
Reading Kelly Sundberg’s writing—fresh, luminous, spirited—is a pleasure second only to witnessing her decision to survive. Goodbye Sweet Girl is a meditation on what it takes to save your own life.”
A shattering of the silence that enables domestic violence to continue, Goodbye, Sweet Girl shines a fierce light on how complex and sometimes joyous a relationship that’s also an abusive cage can be, why women gradually lose the orientation they need to find the exit, and how they escape when they do, or how this one did. This book is a testament—and a warning to batterers that the silence is broken, and their secrets are leaking out.
With disorienting elegance Kelly Sundberg shows her readers how difficult it can be to believe even your own experiences of abuse when they begin in what seems to be a loving relationship, and unfold alongside depression and confusion arising as a result of that very abuse—and perhaps worst of all, when in the midst of such doubt, fear and sorrow, loved ones question your judgment. Kelly brings clear eyes, an open heart and the vulnerability that comes from long healing to a story of domestic grief and horrific abuse. The abuse that she long told herself, and others, was not really that bad. The writing and juxtaposition of scenes are striking and terrible in their beauty—it’s no coincidence that her story begins among men and women who both depend utterly on the mountains and forests of Idaho, and who seem hell-bent on destroying them. It is a powerful spirit indeed who not only navigated so many lonely and terrible days and nights, but who also escaped with grace, a beloved child, and the determination to share her story, difficult as that must have been. This is an important book.
In her stunning memoir, Kelly Sundberg examines the heart-breaking bonds of love, detailing her near decade-long marriage’s slide into horrific abuse. Sundberg shares her own confusions, fears and empathy for her violent husband, even as she comes to realize he will never change. This is an immensely courageous story that will break your heart, leave you in tears, and, finally, offer hope and redemption. Brava, Kelly Sundberg.
Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a breathtaking gut-punch of a memoir. Real talk: the story is hard. We spend so much time pretending that domestic violence doesn’t exist. We spend so much time doubting women. Enough. Sundberg gives us the truth in all its complexity; fear and hope and fury in gorgeous, near-cinematic prose that made me weep, and cheer, and understand. Here is how we save ourselves. Here is how we survive.
It is a hell of a thing to write about brutality and suffering with strength, grace, generosity and beauty. That’s precisely what Kelly Sundberg has done in her gripping memoir about marriage and domestic violence. Sundberg’s honesty is astonishing, how she laid so much of herself bare, how she did not demonize a man who deserves to be demonized. Instead, she offers a portrait of a broken man and a broken marriage and an abiding love, what it took to set herself free from it all. In shimmering, open hearted prose, she shows that it took everything.
Because of its subject matter, Goodbye, Sweet Girl
In this can’t-take-your-eyes-off-the-page memoir, hard-bitten Idaho is a savage landscape “full of sawed-off mountains,” nuclear waste, and wild animals just outside your door. But for Sundberg, the real danger shares her bed. How does a violent partner erode the terrain of your heart? And are you ever too old to run away from home?
Goodbye, Sweet Girl is heartbreaking, breathtaking in its scope, and urgently truthful in its harrowing and tender examination of when empathy fails—and when it wins.
04/09/2018
A fierce, frightening, soulful reckoning— Goodbye, Sweet Girl is an expertly rendered memoir that investigates why we stay in relationships that hurt us, and how we survive when we leave them. Kelly Sundberg is a force. She has written the rare book that has the power to change lives.
Goodbye Sweet Girl is a beautiful, devastating, and nuanced story of domestic abuse and escape that does true justice to the experiences of the victims without judgment or criticism of their choices.
[Goodbye, Sweet Girl helps us] to better understand each of our nuances and complexities, how any of us rationalizes our decisions, and how we find the courage to take care of ourselves and to speak our truths…. [Sundberg writes] her truth with a deep sense of compassion.
Mesmerizing and poetic, Goodbye Sweet Girl is a harrowing, cautionary and ultimately redemptive tale that brilliantly illuminates one woman’s transformation.
Lyrical and taut, Goodbye, Sweet Girl provides readers with an honest and critical account of partner violence.
Booklist (starred review)
2018-04-03
