Repetition sets the tone from the opening chapters of Hunger, with the phrase, “this is a book”: I think this is especially effective in writing about trauma-it enables both the author and readers to wade into an emotionally difficult topic in small, steady steps-and it exemplifies the journey of surviving trauma, in the ways one is often forced to revisit the experience and can struggle to make meaning from it. Roxane Gay also uses repetition to great effect in Hunger in this memoir it occurs at more of a micro level, in words and phrases repeated at intervals. In the final essay-the eighth and the longest in the book-Febos tells the story in its entirety, and her voice has the power of a mountaineer who has ascended seven consecutive peaks and is just hitting her stride as she runs circles around them. In seven different ways we learn about the pain and fear of disappearing, and the oceans of a hungry, grabbing desire. In the seven shorter essays of the book, Febos returns to these girlhood wounds and draws connections to lingering questions about her heritage and an intense and mystifying relationship with a married woman. It is a hungry, grabbing thing,” she writes. Early on she describes the fear and abandonment she felt when her father, “the Captain,” went to sea: “The ocean disappears things. In Abandon Me, Febos returns to the same themes over and over, but each time expands to new territory and gives them more context. They are both achingly honest and vulnerable.īut the spellbinding nature of these books has everything to do with language both use repetition as a literary device to achieve a lyricism, rhythm, and resonance that build power. They both explore themes of love, desire, and identity, and, to varying degrees, trauma and its aftermath. They have much in common-Roxane Gay’s Hunger and Melissa Febos’s Abandon Me both deal with longing to be understood and fighting the instinct to try to disappear. Two memoirs of the past year left me spellbound.