What I'm Reading: Nobody's Girl

Reviewing books is one of many tasks I've taken on since dedicating myself to writing more than a decade ago. 

But I typically review Italian works that have been translated into English or other works of literary fiction.

So the short review I'm about to publish here doesn't necessarily mesh with the thousands of posts about Italy or translation or what I bought at Rizzoli, say. And the book in question doesn't sit naturally next to books about the Holocaust that I've been reading over the past few years as I translated Edith Bruck's work.

But it does reflect me as a person who knows there are some distinct ways that being a woman can differ from being a man (even if men, too, can be victims of rapists).

The posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, by Virginia Giuffre is the story of how Jeffrey Epstein abused countless numbers of girls like the author.

As I mentioned in my 2025 reading roundup, I not only read the book to make a point, I BOUGHT it -- in hardback -- to make a "sales" point: This topic is important and I'll show you how important with my money.

(I'll also show you -- whoever you are -- that the topic is so sensitive that I hid the book under my pillow because I didn't want my son to see it, even though he unfortunately knows all about Epstein. All teens and tweens who happen to catch "Saturday Night Live" or "The Daily Show" or who may read headlines on the front page of The New York Times, as Leo, my son, often does, know about Epstein).

Much of what I could tell you about the book is well-known -- the most-reported aspect, I suppose, involves the Royal Family.

But what I took away from the book is the following: many, many people had occasion to observe Jeffrey Epstein with young girls.

I suppose some of them -- hotel clerks, elected officials, university professors -- may have thought these girls were his daughters or nieces. Maybe they thought he was a professor?

But anyone who visited his home would have known something was, at the very least, different. I think you could visit a lot of homes even of powerful men and there are not armies of young girls taking your coat and offering you something to eat.

In any event, why did so few people ask themselves this: why is this middle-aged man always with very young, very attractive girls?

What is the likelihood that he acted fatherly toward them?

Giuffre describes so many trips that she took with Epstein. Perhaps I know so little about how the rich travel -- on private jets and hence not waiting at the boarding gate as I would, I suppose? -- that I don't understand fully if the girls would have been observed as they traveled with him.

Do their names appear on the flight logs?

All of this to say: I read Nobody's Girl, and if you want to know more about Epstein, I suggest you do the same.

May Virginia rest in peace. She didn't deserve any of the things that happened to her.

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