I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath in my twenties, and no piece of writing has ever felt more like home to me. I don’t recall every minute detail of the story, but I remember how I felt reading it—the emotions it carried, and the emotions within myself that it seemed to recognize. I carried those feelings with me for years, but most of all, I carried you, Esther Greenwood, describing your descent into madness and your eventual ascension out of it. I saw myself in both versio

Last night I dreamt of a nameless woman— A lovely, unusual name formed on her lips but dissolved before it reached me. I woke with the feeling that I had almost known her—yet she remained a stranger. It was no coincidence, I think, that I had been rereading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier when my dreams became haunted—fully submerged in its gothic atmosphere and quiet mystery. I have spent my evenings marvelling at du Maurier’s ability to carry me through time and space so seam

Content Warning: This review discusses sexual abuse, coercion, and trauma. The memoir itself contains graphic depictions of abuse that may be triggering. I read Ordeal by Linda Lovelace over the holiday break. Or, more accurately, I devoured it—and it devoured me in return, body and soul, leaving nothing behind. No trace remaining of the woman I was before I read it. It inhabited me. Not in the way great literature does—through beautiful prose that lingers like perfume, or a