Melissa Fraterrigo’s third book, The Perils of Girlhood could not have been more aptly named. Through twenty short essays, Fraterrigo takes us through the moments in her life that shaped her world view and her experience of her gender. Relatability is not essential, but this seems to be at the heart of her writing—a desire to connect. She wants other women, and perhaps specifically mothers, to know that she has empathy for them.
In “On the Verge of Being,” Fraterrigo uses the collective “we,” a voice that can be perceived as a nod to The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. “We” meaning her friends, her fellow middle school classmates, the young girls of the United States of America. We want boyfriends, want to be cared for, want to stay up late giggling, want to be wanted, we want to win. In this essay, Fratterigo mentions her adoration for Judy Blume, a clear inspiration for this style of confessional writing. However, what was revolutionary in the 1970s is no longer enough to garner attention and provoke thought. Everyone reading this book will have lived through their own adolescence and the discomfort that comes along with it. Fraterrigo states her partial perspective but does not provide strong external references or analogies to expand the reader’s worldview.
This reference to Blume conjures up ripples of Jia Tolentino’s essay “Pure Heroines” in her 2019 essay collection, Trick Mirror. Where Tolentino wove connections between multiple fictitious modes of oppression towards women as allegories for our contemporary experience, Fraterrigo simply suggested: We liked Judy Blume. We read her.
Much of Fraterrigo’s writing in the first few essays in this collection, hyper-relatable to the public school American girl experience, could be distilled to this sentence, “Right now, we’re glad to be thirteen.” I was left wanting Fraterrigo to have more faith in her voice, enough to convey her temporal adolescent uncertainty while also showcasing her writing skills as an adult. The most compelling sections are set in the swimming pool or with a gun in hers or somebody else’s hand. Fraterrigo has a rare ability to write about movement and fluidity to increase tension, which, in turn, can highlight some shortcomings in other aspects of the composition.
One of the strongest moments of clarity takes place in an exhibit of halted decomposition in the essay, “Vinegar.” Fraterrigo narrates the positions of preserved humans displayed at a picnic, their ligaments and tendons exposed. She’s viewing this exhibition with her mother the day she announces her pregnancy. Two weeks later, she will miscarry. Fraterrigo details the visuals of preserved embryos donated during the Great Depression without wandering, just tight clinical descriptions that show her capability for precision.
The chronological structure of the essays suggested that over the course of the collection her voice might develop and grow as she did: a methodological practice of storytelling to highlight the significance of the passage of time in terms of an adolescent’s plane of development. I was grateful when the essay “More Like Dad” halfway through the collection caught me by surprise. This essay explores an intergenerational dynamic within her family of loss and anger. Fraterrigo’s strong belief is evident throughout these stories, that she loves her girlhood/it has caused her pain. This pain opens up to represent the basic truths of life: desire does not clearly translate to consent, comparison is the thief of joy, loving husbands let us down, beliefs are transitory, our parents should have protected us, our parents are human, too, we will remind ourselves of them one day.
At the heart of this collection’s eponymous essay is an imagined victimhood. A throughline is a poking and prodding at wounds in order to progress the story instead of trusting the individual sentences will be enough. Instead of offering up an ode to Liberty German and Abigail Williams, two young girls who were murdered in 2017, Fraterrigo wonders: What if this was me? What if they were my daughters? What could have been a beautiful way to honor Liberty and Abigail was instead a meditation on fear of the “other.” An “othering” of the neighbor, of the unhoused people sleeping at the park, of the author’s friend’s son. The scientific fact that motherhood changes and therefore strengthens the amygdala seems to be the excuse for this practice. This does not take away from the value of her intention: teaching children that their bodies are theirs and theirs alone, that they should be firm and loud in their boundaries. Maybe like others, I am just tired of lending time to ruminations about fears, if restorative justice is not considered. I am tired of furthering stereotypes.
In “November 1st, 1991” in the aftermath of a shooting at her university, the author thinks of material items she keeps in her childhood closet that ground her, that actualize her personhood and personality: “A box of remembrances—a crumpled Kleenex from my grandpa’s funeral, my first bra, the yearbook from eighth grade, ribbons from swim meets.”
This list transmutes into a larger confession: How easy it is to center ourselves in any tragedy. This does not read as strictly selfish, but as also a connective tissue. We are all just little animals burrowing, collecting, counting, storing up for the next winter. In “Vinegar,” Fraterrigo confesses she tried to get to the bottom of death by mixing an elixir of vinegar, furniture polish and other toxins from her basement and sprinkling it on ants. Her mother, oblivious to the consequence of this experiment, makes young Melissa confirm she will clean the mess up when she’s done. Fraterrigo is effective at communicating misunderstandings between parent and child through snapshots so habitual we forget to provide space for them. Through this, she shares the importance of every experience, how fresh, how heartbreaking this fleeting newness is.
If there is one essay you read from this collection, read “The Sacred Disease.” Inspired by her daughter’s diagnosis, Fraterrigo gifts the reader an insightful history of seizures, from Babylonian myths of possession to modern day institutionalized oppressions towards those suffering with epilepsy.
Just more than halfway through the book, Fraterrigo writes: “‘What’s important about this story?’ an editor once asked. I didn’t have an answer. Maybe I never will.” I found myself asking this same question. To be more precise, I wondered what her timid stretches towards feminism and brief commentary on gun violence hoped to achieve. Her direct confrontation and acceptance of uncertainty by saying that she herself doesn’t know, is necessary. She is simply sharing. The flow of this collection allows for a relaxed reading experience. I finished the book in one sitting. I knew I would not be bored, that I would find comfort. I believe this is what the author intended. For this, Fraterrigo is successful.
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Publication Date: September 1, 2025
Reviewed by Sophie Howe
Sophie Howe is a writer and artist from New Hampshire. She is a runner-up for Whitechapel Gallery’s Young Writer in Residence 2024. Her writing about compassionate body horror in contemporary fiction has appeared in Polyester Zine.