Longreads For Your Saturday Night In

Skipping the pub because of resolutions/craic fatigue/your weeping bank account? If you’re looking for a proper night in with a brew of black tea and a packet of Hobnobs, look no futher than this list of arresting longreads we’ve assembled.

This true crime longread about how the murder of 13-year-old Yara Gambirasio obsessed Italy and exposed the society’s secrets via theguardian.com is terrifying, extraordinary, and will leave you with a chill in your bones.

?Yara’s disappearance has continued to grip the Italian public over the past four years, becoming one of the most extraordinary, and sophisticated, criminal investigations in Italian history. ?It’s like a novel?, a newspaper editor once told me, shaking his head. When I recently asked Ruggeri, the chief investigator, to sum up the case, she stared at her desk and just said ?incredible? four times.?

The murder that has obsessed Italy by Tobias Jones

We attended the Nollaig ns mBan event at the Irish Writer’s Centre this year with the Women’s Museum of Ireland and The Anti Room, where the latter held a gripping panel session on women’s confessional writing. As the likes of Tramp Press? Lisa Coen and YA writer Louise O?Neill debated the value of such writing, we were reminded of this article from Mac McClelland, which one really can’t forget after reading. (trigger warning)

?After proposing for the 87th time that I have intercourse with him, he was grasping for anything that might change my mind, trying eventually, wildly, “We can do this at gunpoint if that sells it for you.” And actually, it did, yeah.?

I’m Gonna Need You to Fight Me On This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease My PTSD by Mac McClelland

Christmas and the celebratory social media gluttony that accompanies the holidays may be over, and replaced with a zest for all things clean and detox. Can you imagine putting up with that white noise while coping ?with an eating disorder? Roisin Kiberd, a talented young Irish writer worth checking out, wrote this piece before Christmas about coping with anorexia.

?This will be only my second ‘recovered? Christmas, and it never stops feeling strange. The prospect of dinners with friends and family is quietly terrifying: excess becomes the default, every occasion merits mulled wine and mince pies, and every M&S sandwich holds the contents of a roast dinner.?

Christmas Dinners, Mental Illness and Asking For Help by Roisin Kiberd

The February issue of Elle features a killer essay, Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon, by the writer Emma Forrest about how she was targeted as a young woman in the world of journalism – by a bitchy fellow female writer and sexually aggressive men who should have known better. It’s a stark read, almost necessary. Here is something she wrote in 2011 about how her curves invited a romantic life that was plagued with improper attention and backhanded compliments.

“I’d known my place in the scheme of things ever since I’d first started obsessively watching movies as a young girl. Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor are the bad girls, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly the good; Raquel Welch bad, Mia Farrow good, J.Lo bad, Gwyneth good.”

My Tragic Marilyn Monroe Moment by Emma Forrest

Follow Jeanne Sutton on Twitter @jeannedesutun