Good Woman: A Reckoning – A Bold and Lyrical Feminist Memoir on Midlife Awakening and the Joy of Defying Expectations

by Savala Nolan

A Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Ms. Magazine

A raw and lyrical exploration of the confining expectations of womanhood and, if we dare, what lies beyond those limitations—from a writer Roxane Gay calls “vibrant and thoughtful.”

Gorgeous, badass, and practically waiting to pounce, Good A Reckoning is acclaimed essayist Savala Nolan’s follow-up to her “standout collection” (New York Times Book Review) Don't Let It Get You Down.

A lifetime of playing by the rules of female social conditioning is not what it’s cracked up to be for Nolan. The years of making herself smaller (literally and metaphorically); the sexual advances that led to more than she wanted; the bad marriage she fought like hell to keep; all the ways others questioned her identity or choices and she let it slide to keep the peace; her silence when requested; her body when desired—none of it worked. None of it protected her the way it was advertised to.

Nolan noticed the same was true for the women around her and the women in history she read about. Across time and location, they were raised to be agreeable and “good.” Hyper-visible as sexual objects but invisible as full people. Living in a physical world created by men for men. Taking on the ultimate role of birth-giver and caretaker, yet seeing it remain an unsung act, even as it’s a God-like endeavor. Only in midlife did Nolan begin to realize she was capable of living outside these cages of conditioning so slyly insidious that they’re nearly invisible.

Good Woman elegantly probes the knotty conditions themselves, the costs of adhering to them, and what happens when one refuses to comply. The twelve stunning and unforgettable essays blend memoir, reportage, and history to create a collection that is alternately bold, brash, and explosive ... and ravishingly tender, sensual, and joyous. Nolan takes aim at big and old ideas, and she does not miss. Hers is a testimony to witness and to savor.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Feminism, Memoir, Audiobook, Contemporary, Womens

234 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 3, 2026

Reviews

[Elizabeth K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not quite halfway through this book yet, and I normally don’t review #NetGalley ARCs until I finish the book. But I already know that I will be rating this book very highly. I requested this advance copy because I so enjoyed Savala Nolan’s first book, but this one is better. Don't Let It Get You Down was a memoir; Good Woman is a manifesto. The writing is stronger and more powerful. Professor Nolan has clearly entered her “gives zero f*cks” era, as they say on the peri/menopause Internet, and I am here for it.

[simona.citeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eseuri foarte faine și profunde despre femei și multe dintre problemele cu care ne confruntăm.
Mi-a plăcut

[CSwriteshorror · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and Mariner Books for allowing me to read this eArc. Nolan has written a very powerful series of essays about growing up black and female in America. She writes about how hard it is to be female in a man’s world. I don’t want to give too much away, but this book was excellent.

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I came across this book while browsing qualifying titles for the Her Story Goodreads reading challenge, and I was initially intrigued by the premise.
Unfortunately, this one just wasn’t for me. The writing felt more anecdotal than grounded in fact, and while I can respect the author’s personal experiences and perspective, the overall tone came across as a bit too flippant for my taste.
There were a couple of moments that really pulled me out of the book. One was when the author expressed disappointment that her fiancé didn’t “defend her honor,” followed by the suggestion that women want men to fight for them. That perspective felt outdated and surprising.
Another section that stood out in a negative way was when she described touching her genitals while on her period and wiping it on her child. I found this moment particularly unnecessary and inappropriate, and it didn’t align with what I would consider normal or relatable maternal instinct.
Of course, everyone’s experiences and boundaries are different, but overall, this book didn’t resonate with me.

[Abby Reyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I savored these gorgeous essays, dog-earring and revisiting several, several times. Nolan lets the reader into the tender reaches of her experience with humor, smarts, and cutting critique, re/weaving ancestors and descendants into the web of life through story and history. In so doing, she invites us into our own relationships to what it means, and what it costs, to stay in the smallness of our society’s notion of what makes a good woman. I grew from reading this collection; I got three copies for my goddaughters.

[Courtney Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Woman knocked me out with its fresh, wide-ranging insights, intellectual heft, emotional courage, and humor. I devoured it, which is fitting because it's all about women's desires and how powerful they can be in this deeply broken world. The intersectional feminist analysis is spot on, but not "academic" or preachy. I just loved it. I will read everything Savala Nolan writes from here on out. She did such justice to the essay form.

[Madeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a four-star book that I adored, so I’m giving it 5⭐️

She’s on my wavelength. The intro essay is unreal. I could memorize it. The second essay, “Mothers Superior,” was also astounding. Remarkable. What a piece of work.
“Wyoming” explored some super interesting ideas. “Which Men” promised to explore one specific interesting question (which men hurt women?) but instead explored other (still interesting) ideas. Some that were strong, but these and the following essays are where the unevenness started to show. I’m not sure how “Which Men” was organized, but it wasn’t quite right.
Then “This Recent Unpleasantness” and “Lest We Die of Hunger,” and the good ideas were eclipsed by wordiness, too-long sentences, and inscrutable organization. “Enfant Terrible” chose the wrong hook, and then described diets in detail for no reason. “The Made World” was too basic and then too experimental. “Witness” told two incredible stories too separately. And it started a weird subject heading thing that didn’t work there but did work in the next essay, “Good Advice.”
On balance, so much good stuff here! So many thoughts I have and haven’t thought about topics I think about often. Brutal to see the issues and wish I could have helped edit it.
Amazing.

[Mary Anne]

5 STARS

How this book ended up on my TBR: I'm still awful at going through my personal emails (well over 28k unread, as we speak), but I've chipped away at a couple of newsletters recently. One of them is Virginia Sole-Smith's Burnt Toast; she interviewed Nolan about her new book. A recommendation by Roxanne Gay is also good enough for me.

Good Woman: A Reckoning is a series of autobiographical essays addressing and analyzing societal expectations and experiences of what it means to be a "good woman". They appear to be officially non-linear, but I do think they are mostly in chronological order. It doesn't really matter, except to show the transitioning of her thoughts. (I normally would have used the term "evolving", but to me that sort of implies improvement or coming to a final, better place, and I'm not sure that's the case.) Her essays are lyrical, conversational, and engaging, even to someone who can't entirely identify with the experiences she's sharing.

Some of the commentary of this book complains about not being able to identify with what Nolan's sharing, which, whatever. That's just not always possible in a collection of personal essays, and I also don't think that's Nolan's point. The other point I've heard that's absolutely amusing to me that she's not more objective in her musings. It's a memoir of sorts, and there's nothing in the book description that indicates it's an informative nonfiction book. I instead greatly appreciate that she's so open with her contradictory thoughts. Why might someone want a man to defend their honor, even though they identify as a strong, independent woman? I'm in a happy and committed relationship, and I know that marriage isn't everyone's end game, and I don't think it should be if you don't want it. And yet, why do I want it? I know I have these contradictory thoughts often, so it was something I could identify with. I know it doesn't always make sense, and I find the contradictions frustrating, but that's life.

Overall I really enjoyed listening to this book, and Nolan does a phenomenal job narrating it. I'm very interested in reading more of her work.

--

PS. My days on GoodReads are likely numbered. If you all ever go to The StoryGraph, let's be friends there! Here's my profile.

[LX · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you so much for the copy!!

3.25??

I really enjoyed the start and found some parts very eye-opening, thought provoking and really just got me engaged in the reading. But there were some parts that made me ???

[Priscilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read and cathartic at times

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do yourself a favor and buy this book. It is SO dang good. 👏👏👏

[Clara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. These were GOOD. Of course I liked some of them more than others, but I really enjoyed the writing style and the topics discussed here. These essays were very open and raw, I missed reading non-fiction.

[Cassandra Marie Darling · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thought this would be more objective and it wasn't. It was a rant, I agree with some of the rants but it wasn't the book I was expecting so therefore found it meh. This wasn't a badly written book at all it just didn't hit expectations.

[Gabrielle Hoover · Rating 5 out of 5]

So amazing.

[Emily Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A series of feminist essay, I found ‘the recent unpleasantness’ and ‘witness’ particularly powerful.

[ouliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

but why do people think their opinions matter so much

[Lauren Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I see what we were going for here, but it was hard for me to get through all of the complaining. This book was a drag for me.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

took my time savoring the pages of Savala’s writing. i am not usually a fan of essays, but her memoir of fierce, lyrical, expansive words feels necessary and life-giving. i was sharing photos of paragraphs & pages throughout the whole book.

[Kayla DeToma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted this to be really enlightening/empowering/uplifting but found it was quite annoying instead. Multiple times I was like .. huh girl? You did what?

[Giorgia Grayson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I want to start by saying this was a brilliantly written book that just was not for me. I could not put it down but the reflections just did not hit.

I’m honestly confused by all the rave reviews. This is an excellently written book don’t get me wrong but I found the content often in poor taste.

I love a book about female rage but this book felt confused. If I had a penny for every contrary statement made I’d be rich. The first half of the book felt like the author was declaring war on men, specifically her ex husband without being able to clearly state what she wanted except for them to go away.

While the issues the author discussed are all important and I can agree that socionormative gender norms can put women into boxes and be constrictive. The author would proclaim her disgust about stereotypes just to conform and confirm them later in the chapter. Was this a statement about how infiltrated our actions are by said stereotypes?

Reading this book at times felt like a train wreck I couldn’t look away from. I can understand that I am not the target audience for this book but I found most of her commentary (excluding that of her experience of race) to come off as jaded and bitter. This book was made to be controversial and it has done an excellent job of just that but in my opinion it promoted the worst kind of feminism. No reform just rage.

This book is a rant of the female experience. Affirming every critical thought you’ve ever had about society. Of you are angry and needing an outlet this book is for you.

I often found myself wondering if the author were to have a son instead of a daughter would her opinion on men be different?

[Desirae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Good Woman: A Reckoning felt less like reading a conventional memoir and more like sitting across from someone who has finally decided to tell the truth without softening it for anyone else’s comfort. Savala Nolan writes with the kind of intellectual confidence and emotional sharpness that makes every essay feel urgent. What impressed me most about this collection is its sheer scope. Nolan is not content to write only about herself, even though the memoir elements are deeply personal and often devastatingly intimate. Instead, she uses her own experiences as a doorway into larger conversations about womanhood, race, desire, motherhood, religion, beauty, power, and the exhausting performance of being “good.” The result is a book that feels both intensely individual and startlingly universal.

The collection is made up of twelve essays, but the essays are so interconnected that the book reads like one sustained argument against the social conditioning women are expected to accept without question. Nolan’s central idea is deceptively simple: women are taught that goodness—agreeability, silence, self-sacrifice, compliance—will protect them. Her memoir dismantles that promise piece by piece. She argues that being “good” did not save her from pain, humiliation, loneliness, misogyny, or self-erasure. Instead, the pursuit of goodness often required her to abandon herself.

What makes the book remarkable is how wide-ranging it is without ever losing emotional coherence. Nolan moves seamlessly between memoir, history, cultural criticism, theology, and political analysis. One moment she is reflecting on the realities of marriage and divorce; the next she is examining how patriarchal systems shape the physical world around women, from medicine to religion to public space. The essays never feel scattered because her voice is so commanding. Even when she shifts topics, there is always the sense that she is circling the same essential question: what would happen if women stopped trying so hard to be acceptable?

The voice of this memoir is probably its greatest achievement. Nolan writes with a blend of lyrical intensity and conversational honesty that makes even her most theoretical observations feel deeply human. She can be funny, furious, reflective, sensual, and analytical all within a single page. What I appreciated most was that the prose never feels performative. There is a rawness to the writing that makes the book emotionally persuasive. Nolan is not trying to sound wise after the fact; she allows contradictions and uncertainties to remain visible. That vulnerability gives the memoir its power.

Several essays stand out because of the way they expand personal experience into something much larger. “Refusal,” which opens the collection, serves almost as a manifesto. In it, Nolan examines the ways women are trained to prioritize likability and compliance over their own instincts and survival. The essay establishes the central tension of the memoir: the realization that conformity has never truly protected women.

“Mothers Superior” is perhaps the book’s most ambitious essay thematically. Nolan reimagines motherhood not as passive sacrifice but as something powerful, divine, and structurally misunderstood. She critiques the traditional image of God as male and argues instead for a conception of divinity rooted in maternal labor and care. What could have become abstract or overly academic instead feels deeply personal because Nolan grounds every argument in lived experience.

Another recurring topic throughout the memoir is the body, particularly the ways women are taught to monitor, discipline, and shrink themselves physically and emotionally. Nolan writes candidly about dieting, body image, and the psychological violence of constantly being told that occupying less space is virtuous. These sections are some of the most painful in the book because they expose how early girls absorb the belief that their bodies are problems to solve.

The essays on relationships and marriage are equally compelling because Nolan refuses easy conclusions. She writes honestly about longing, loneliness, intimacy, and disappointment without reducing any of it to simplistic empowerment rhetoric. One of the memoir’s strengths is that Nolan never pretends liberation is neat or emotionally uncomplicated. Leaving behind old expectations creates freedom, but it also creates grief. That emotional complexity gives the collection real depth.

What I found especially impressive was Nolan’s ability to balance anger with tenderness. There is righteous fury throughout the book, particularly in her discussions of misogyny and racialized expectations of women, but there is also humor, joy, and genuine curiosity. The memoir does not collapse into cynicism. Instead, it asks readers to imagine new ways of living outside inherited structures that were never designed for women’s flourishing in the first place.

If I had to identify the memoir’s greatest strength, it would be the way Nolan elevates the essay form itself. Each piece feels carefully constructed but emotionally alive. She blends storytelling with analysis so naturally that the transitions never feel forced. Even when I occasionally thought an essay wandered slightly or became intentionally sprawling, I still admired the ambition behind it. Nolan is attempting to map the architecture of womanhood itself, and that kind of intellectual and emotional reach requires room to expand.

Ultimately, Good Woman: A Reckoning succeeds because it refuses containment. It is memoir, feminist critique, cultural analysis, spiritual inquiry, and personal testimony all at once. But more than anything, it is a book driven by voice: sharp, fearless, emotionally intelligent, and impossible to ignore. Nolan writes as though she has finally stopped apologizing for taking up space, and that confidence radiates through every page. By the end of the collection, what stays with me is not only the brilliance of her ideas but the force of her perspective. This is a memoir that challenges readers not simply to reconsider what it means to be a “good woman,” but to question whether goodness, as society defines it, was ever worth aspiring to in the first place.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Woman: A Reckoning is a powerful essay collection by Savala Nolan that interrogates the burdens of societal expectations placed on women and imagines life beyond them. Nolan weaves memoir, reportage, history, philosophy, and legal insight across twelve essays that are at once intimate and sweeping in scope.

The collection explores Nolan’s journey from compliance and silence to resistance and clarity: “a lifetime of playing by the rules of female social conditioning,” and how none of it delivered protection or fulfillment the way it promised. Through lyrical, raw prose, Nolan dissects her experiences from unwanted conformity, a troubled marriage, and societal demands placed on identity and body in order to uncover what unfolds when one refuses the script written for them.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great group of essays centered on various aspects of womanhood. Felt very authentic, unfiltered, raw, honest, and relatable.

[⋆˙⟡ 𝔪𝔦𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔞 ⋆˙⟡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I enjoyed reading this book. The author’s writing style is smooth, engaging, & direct. Her perspective felt raw & honest & I found myself relating more than I initially thought I would. I appreciated how she gave voice to experiences that are often difficult to articulate.

[Hallie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25⭐️ I’m glad that every one of the topics in this book is being spoken about, and I hope the author has found it healing to write about her experiences. Her writing is engaging and each chapter kept my attention. There were chapters I found particularly illuminating, such as the one about how early and thoroughly in childhood the conditioning to be a “good girl” has been dug. Her writing on slavery and racism was particularly moving.

I just wish this book had brought more depth and analysis to the conversation, which is surprising given the author’s credentials. Rather than an overarching thesis, it is a series of separate essays on topics of womanhood and Black womanhood that weren’t linked in a notable way, didn’t really build upon each other, and weren’t supported by all that much empirical evidence (with a couple exceptions). Without those progressions, her essays felt discrete and incomplete - I agreed and empathized / sympathized with them, but that’s not really quite enough. I was left wishing for another layer of analysis from every chapter. There were also some unsupported claims (for example, that disability-focused design components have been internalized as essential aspects of design and our society, and that we can consider that box checked off) that felt like a lack of engagement with material that speaks to other forms of marginalization. Maybe I’m just wanting this book to be something it wasn’t meant to, though.

Still, this was an enjoyable, thought-provoking read that spoke clearly to experience I both have and will never have, and both felt tangible. That alone is an achievement.

[Jigyasa Kumari · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book in a Goodreads Giveaway!

Good Woman: A Reckoning by Savala Nolan is a collection of essays that discuss gender, sexuality (and to a certain extent, race) in the modern world. The collection manages to capture the contradictory experience of being a woman in present day society. We are told to consider our constraints as rewards, to sacrifice our own desires for those of others, and to be invisible when needed. We are taught that to be good means to carry the moral weight of society. Nolan "rejects" this notion of goodness. Instead, she emphasises the importance of freedom.

I found this book to be extremely relatable (for instance, the whole of "Wyoming" was something my friends have experienced in real life). Even when the essays discuss age-old topics like sexual assault, slavery, and bodily autonomy, they have a fresh perspective. Nolan's personal struggles of preventing this patriarchal legacy from reaching her daughter are extremely touching.

All in all, I felt that this was a thought-provoking work that invites women to question the cultural roles they are situated in, and how they can move to a more fulfilling way of living.

[Kristine Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

This essay collection is a must read. Life as a Black woman, life as a mother, life as a wife, life as a divorced person, life as a person in a larger body. What do these various perspectives give us? Empathy but also intentionality with how we choose to show up in the world and for ourselves as women.

[Chelsea Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. So much of it was relatable and made me laugh or smile despite myself. Every essay gave me rich food for thought and caused me to reflect on my own life and experiences, even if I couldn't directly relate to the experiences of the author. I love the generosity of feminist writers to put to paper experiences in life that I previously felt like we weren't allowed to talk about out loud. Thank you, Savala, for your bravery on every page.

[Nayonika Roy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Goodreads Challenge made me read this book. It was very difficult for me to stay focused and complete this. Most parts - I didn't enjoy and thought this could have just been a conversation in her head instead of on pen and paper.

[Geneiveve “Annie” Jannetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

An informative, interesting, and needed to be sold memoir. I’m not a prude but sometimes the way she speaks of sex made me a little uncomfortable. Even if that said, I would definitely recommend this others.