Nobody’s Girl. By Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Audiobook

Emma Smith

A raw and unflinching thread runs through Virginia Roberts Giuffre's memoir, "Nobody's Girl." In its pages, the activist and survivor, who tragically passed away in April, grapples with a force more insidious than abuse alone: the fear that her story will be too much. "I know it's a lot to take in," she writes after a brutal early passage on her childhood sexual abuse. "But please don't stop reading." After detailing being forced to have sex with one of Jeffrey Epstein's billionaire friends, she pauses: "I need a breather. I bet you do too."

Giuffre employs a startlingly direct voice throughout. She beguiles, she apologizes, she cheerfully breaks the fourth wall - a strategy she uses to soften the blow of her own narrative. She assumes, not incorrectly, that the horror of her reality would make a reader turn away. This is a book about power, corruption, and industrial-scale sex abuse. It's a testament to how institutions sided with a perpetrator over his victims. Epstein hanged himself in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial. Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator, is now serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking. Giuffre's testimony was a key reason for both outcomes. But this book is also the story of how a young woman, in the face of all that, became a hero. And yet, she still felt she had to charm us.

Her instincts weren't wrong. Giuffre, who was 41 and whose sharp, smart book is co-written with journalist Amy Wallace, understood the public's cruel lens. A victim of sexual violence is often pitied or reviled. A headline from the Daily News during her case read: "Jeffrey Epstein Accuser Was Not a Sex Slave, but a Money-Hungry Sex Kitten." I approached "Nobody's Girl" with questions. First, does it reveal the "Epstein list"? It does not name new names. The most chilling new detail is her account of a "politician and former minister" who choked and beat her. When she complained, Epstein simply said: "You'll get that sometimes."

Second, does this book further seal Ghislaine Maxwell's fate? It does. The account of Maxwell's participation is damning. It was Maxwell who spotted the 16-year-old Giuffre working at a Mar-a-Lago locker room and brought her to Epstein. It was Maxwell who participated in the assaults. "Maxwell began lashing out at me during our threesomes," Giuffre writes. "If I complained, she hurt me more."

Which leads to a third question: why read it? The subject is punishing. I've heard people say they "don't have the stomach" for it - phrasing no victim should have to hear. And yet, this book is a necessary, clear-eyed account of how sex offenders operate. It breathes life into Giuffre's legal status as a "victim," showing us a girl like any we know - like us - who was trafficked while being "free" to walk away. Abused since six, by the time she met Epstein, she writes: "I had been sexualized against my will and had survived by acquiescing. I was a pleaser. Epstein and Maxwell knew just how to tap into that."

Her recollections of Prince Andrew are particularly stark, showing a man in an even more grotesque and buffoonish light. "We disrobed and got in the tub, but we didn't stay there long because the prince was eager to get to the bed... In my memory, the whole thing lasted less than half an hour."

The real weight of this book is not on the famous, but on the ordinary. It is the casual visitors to Epstein's New York mansion, the illustrious men who sat across a 17-year-old girl at a dinner table. I would like to ask them: what did they think she was doing there? It's a question that requires a moral imagination that, as Giuffre's story reveals, is sorely lacking. It was a question only Melinda Gates seemed to grasp, stating that Epstein was "evil personified."

Giuffre was rightly proud of holding these abusers to account. But the cost of that fight is the book's final, crushing truth. The book details her fraught final months: health problems, and alleged domestic violence from her husband, Robert. She wrote to Wallace: "It is my heartfelt wish that this work be published, regardless of my circumstances at the time." Three weeks later, she was found dead on her remote Australian farm, leaving three children behind. In a 2009 lawsuit against Epstein, her lawyers argued that the abuse left her with "a permanent loss of the capacity to to enjoy life." This book is a testament to that loss, and to her immense courage.

This is a deeply compelling and essential read. Its narrative is so vital and its voice so powerful that it transcends the page. I highly recommend it, especially in its audiobook form. Hearing Giuffre's words, with their unique cadence and strength, is an experience that adds a profound dimension to her powerful testament.