This book left me open, exposed, raw. As the jacket notes it's "as painfully honest as your own diary." It takes you back to your most humiliating moment in high school or junior high or even elementary school. We all have them. The event that made you feel so completely alone and pathetic that you wished to be invisible. But this book does more than make you remember your most vulnerable moment. It makes you recall when you made someone else feel that way, and the guilt and shame come rushing back like a tidal wave.
Despite her thundering frame, Meghan Ball is hardly ever seen. She walks ghost-like down the halls of Valley Regional High. People say and do things in front of her as if she doesn't exist, and she almost doesn't until she spies Aimee Zorn. Anorexic Aimee is Meghan's kindred spirit. Like great actors, both use their bodies to say what they cannot with their voices. When pretty, well-liked Cara Roy steals Aimee's poem, Meghan and Aimee work together to get the poem back, and in the process both gain some visibility.
This is not a book about eating disorders. It's not about wanting to be beautiful. It's not just about high school. This is a book about the emotional and physical shells we all create to survive day to day life. It's as relevant to a 35-year-old as it is to a 16-year-old, and it's truly a poetic, lyrical masterpiece of a debut novel.
If you are intrigued by this novel, you might also appreciate the haunting quality of Skinny by Ibi Kaslik.
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