His Favorites: A Novel

"This slim, timely novel about the perversities of power imbalances packs a punch. Kate Walbert’s sympathetic, credible narrator reluctantly confronts painful memories of an unwanted sexual relationship with her boarding school teacher when she was 15, and how her attempts to stop him were infuriatingly, condescendingly stymied. The result: “rage woven into my life with steel thread.” Fueled by gorgeous writing as well as moral outrage, His Favorites jitters around in time, as Walbert’s emotionally scarred narrator gradually works up the courage to articulate the most difficult parts of her story. The result is at once gallingly familiar, heartbreaking and galvanizing."