The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 21 June 2005
by Jenefer Shute
It has become almost cliché to describe American society as obsessed with personal physical appearance. They say we're obsessed both with our weight and with food. Restaurant portions grow to grotesque size, magazine covers sport rail-thin supermodels and the government is constantly warning against a more-than-apparent epidemic of obesity. Calling all this cliché doesn't make it any less true. All this reality and more is seamlessly and compellingly integrated into this short first-person narrative as told by a young graduate student who has just been taken to a hospital for treatment of anorexia nervosa. This eating disorder is a powerful complex of behaviors resulting from any number of psychological traumas, or, maybe, just from the overwhelming dissonance of a wealthy nation's obsessions. Hard to say, and this reader speaks from little information. However, this novel manages to convey the bizarre logic that goes through one woman's mind, as she tries to reach her "ideal" weight of just 65 pounds. Josie's life hasn't been a happy one, with abusive parents, disfunctional relationships, and a compulsion toward self-destruction. She seeks to disappear, and the physical affects of starvation seem to support her almost spiritual feelings about the experience. She is resistant to the treatment at the hospital, including threats of hyperalimentation. Everyone around her looks grotesquely fat, and she revels in what she sees as her own self-control. There are countless contradictions in Josie's world view. She can see how horrifying her skeletal appearance is, but thinks that people stare at her out of envy. She knows she's killing herself, but thinks her eating is normal. And yet, to this reader, it is perhaps a sign of the effect of our society's views on weight and body image that some of Josie's logic appears to make sense while never sounding less than twisted. The novel is very well-written and is punctuated with small notes of humor and large notes of horror. As Josie's body finally receives more nutrition, her thought patterns seem healthier, but what hope is there for her in a world flooded with popular contradictions? The author manages to convince us that we've seen inside the mind of an anorexia patient. She doesn't hammer the point in any excessive way. But she leaves us to infer a great deal of the story, and in that somehow makes it intimate and personal. Powerful reading.