Things We Didn't Talk about When I Was a Girl

by Jeannie Vanasco

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947793545
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	360
Sales rank:	731,272
File size:	841 KB

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.

Editorial Reviews

Facing the person who betrayed you, who preyed upon you, who haunts you: It's the stuff of vengeful daydreams, born of nightmares. Jeannie Vanasco has had plenty of nightmares, but the story she tells in Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is not one of revenge. It's about violence and forgiveness, about friendship and the unwanted title of victim, about digging deeper and deeper to seek answers—from yourself and from your bogeyman. But in this memoir, questions beget more questions, and few are sufficiently answered. Trauma cannot be tied with a tidy bow.

The New York Times Book Review - Maya Salam

05/27/2019

Vanasco (The Glass Eye) was raped during her sophomore year of college, and in this powerful memoir, she confronts her assailant, a man she calls Mark. Vanasco and Mark became friends at 13, and in 2003, while on break from Northwestern University, Vanasco attended a party at the house where Mark lived. She became drunk and Mark took her to his room in the basement. Vanasco graphically describes what followed: Mark undressed her, penetrated her vaginally with his fingers, masturbated over her while she cried, and told her: “It’s just a dream.” Fourteen years later, Vanasco contacted Mark to discuss the assault and here delves into their uncomfortable email exchanges, phone calls, and meetings. Mark has become a remorseful loner, and reveals to her that he’s still a virgin. Vanasco worries about giving him a voice in her book: “But by interviewing him, I also can invert the power dynamic... he’ll probably come across as too defensive. And maybe I want that.” In unadorned prose, the author interweaves her exchanges with Mark with stories of other predatory men she’s known, including a high school teacher who punished her after she rejected him. This is a painful reminder of the ugly ways some men treat women, and Vanasco’s nuanced story will resonate with those who’ve endured sexual inappropriateness in any form. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Intrepid. . . . A work that has the potential to change the way we think and talk about rape and the people who commit it."

Bitch

"There is so much power in these pages."

Elissa Washuta

"Utterly brilliant."

Book Riot

"A remarkably nuanced account of the complicated and confusing emotions that surface when your rapist is someone you knew and trusted."

The Cut

"Bold, unsettling, and timely. . . . A reckoning with injustice."

TIME - Laurie Halse Anderson

"Thought-provoking, unmooring, and haunting."

NYLON

"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

"Explores the common experience of rape with uncommon nuance and intense tenderness."

YZ Chin

"Vanasco immediately makes you wonder how we can take so much about sexual assault for granted."

The Times Literary Supplement

"Striking. . . . Creates a language for something we don’t talk about."

The Paris Review

"Astonishingly fierce."

Emily Geminder

"Gorgeous, harrowing, heartbreaking."

Bustle - Carmen Maria Machado

"Stunning."

Angela Pelster

"Heartfelt, painful, and essential."

Shelf Awareness

"A literary feminist miracle."

Sophia Shalmiyev

"Brilliant."

Megan Stielstra

"Vanasco is a formidable talent."

Daniel Gumbiner

"A rigorous and nuanced investigation."

Lisa Locascio

"Perhaps the most important book of the season."

Esquire

"Sets the canon of #MeToo-era creative nonfiction on fire. . . . Inimitable."

Starred Review Booklist

"Cuts through the silence of deep betrayal."

Amy Jo Burns

"A gripping read and true fodder for the necessary reckoning with toxic masculinity."

BuzzFeed

"About how important it is to speak about these oft-silenced experiences that cause so many to feel ashamed, scared, and alone."

NPR

"Wickedly clever and powerful."

Krystal A. Sital

"Exactly the book we need right now. . . . I wish everyone in this country would read it."

Melissa Febos

"Interrogates the terms of betrayal and the limits of redemption."

Tim Taranto

"About violence and forgiveness, about friendship and the unwanted title of victim, about digging deeper and deeper to seek answers."

The New York Times Book Review

"An essential, unforgettable work."

Erik Anderson

"A cuttingly funny meta-meditation on her own pain in the context of #MeToo."

The Oprah Magazine O