Excerpt from My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

power cuts

Scotland, winter.

Mid-seventies. Oil crisis, power cuts. Put another jumper on, coats indoors.

You arrived early. You would always arrive early.

Blue hands, smaller than starfish. Blue lips, crying and crying, day and night.

She wanted to feed you. She wanted to be good at it.

You were not good.

Bad at milk, bad at sleep.

Failure to thrive, failure to feed, failure to please.

You made the Jumbly Girl unhappy. You made her cry.

The Owl left in the morning and came home in the evening and she was sitting in the same chair and you were still screaming but now she was crying too.

Excerpted from My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss. Copyright © 2024 by Sarah Moss. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.