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

Starred review from September 1, 2019
After 14 years, a survivor of rape chronicles her interviews with the man who assaulted her, a former friend. Inside the swirling "zeitgeist" of the #MeToo movement, Vanasco (English/Towson Univ.; The Glass Eye, 2017) decided not only to write about the experience that still gives her nightmares, but also to include the perspective of the person who raped her. Over emails, phone calls, and in-person conversations, the author interviewed her former friend, Mark, and tried to make sense of his inexplicable betrayal as well as her own ambivalence toward him: "I doubt I'm the only woman sexually assaulted by a friend and confused about her feelings," she writes. At every step of this harrowing process, from deciding how to approach Mark after years without contact to transcribing and interpreting their conversations, the author scrutinizes her own motivations, her compulsive caretaking of Mark's discomfort during their discussions, and the lasting impact of the trauma that he caused her. Perspectives from Vanasco's friends, her partner, and her therapist also figure heavily into the narrative, emphasizing how crucial it is for survivors to have wide networks of support. With deep self-consciousness, courage, and nuance, the author reveals the inner universe of her survivorship and interrogates the notion that rapists are two-dimensionally evil. A friend of Vanasco's reflects, "how can someone who seems so harmless or acts so well or is so intelligent be capable of committing what is understandably kind of an evil act and how can it happen?" Though the author does not exactly answer these questions through her interviews with Mark, her engrossing, complex, incisive testament to the banality of violence is not a desolate narrative. Instead, Vanasco invites her readers to understand the complicated humanity involved in both causing and experiencing harm, leaving the limits and possibilities of accountability and healing as urgent, open questions. An extraordinarily brave work of self- and cultural reflection.

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May 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.

October 1, 2019

As part of the process of healing from her 2003 rape, Vanasco (English, Towson Univ.; The Glass Eye) decides to talk to her rapist, her childhood best friend. This memoir contains the raw and open conversations with her friends and family as well as transcripts of exchanges with the man who raped her. At times the text is linear, at other times fragmented, as the author explores memories and feelings. This book is not only about the author's own experiences, but how sexual assault and rape has impacted other people in her life. It touches on the conversations people have about sexual assault and more important, the dialogs not had. VERDICT This fiercely written, sobering account of actions that alter lives forever is recommended for students of sociology, gender studies, and psychology, as well as general readers wishing to learn more about the effects of sexual assault and rape.--Meghan Dowell, Carroll Uni., Waukesha, WI

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2019
Vanasco's (The Glass Eye, 2017) second memoir sets the canon of #MeToo-era creative nonfiction on fire: she interviews her rapist. In the wake of an assault in her early college years, Vanasco was confused. The assailant was a close friend, though their relationship understandably dissolved without closure following the attack. The details and perceived severity of the crime kept Vanasco from ever fully understanding the incident as a rape. Positive memories of her rapist, whom she calls Mark, fog her classification of him as a bad person. This is a slow-burning, reverberating meditation on the nuances of morality, masculinity, and punishment. Between transcriptions of her conversations with Mark, Vanasco chronicles her experience contacting him?how her friends and family responded, how often she needed therapy, and her fear that she would endanger feminism and survivors' success by giving a voice to an abuser. What emerges is messy, thoughtful, and illuminating. In his own words, verbatim, Mark becomes a dynamic human rather than a flat villain, which somehow makes his crimes against the author appear even more sinister than if his full character had been left to her discretion. With this publication, Vanasco investigates whether understanding one's abuser can break the cycle of abuse. Inimitable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)