National Eating Disorder Awareness Week came to an end as of March 6th, so I figured why not end it with a review for the book I was reading to bring more awareness to both eating disorders and mental health. I always have my current read tucked away in whichever bag I’m toting around and taking advantage of whatever time I get to read, throughout my day, and I can’t tell you how many times a conversation has been started because someone saw the cover of what I was reading. Whether it’s one person or five people, always make the effort to spread an appreciation for literature and awareness about those heavy, important topics. You never know who you’ll end up helping or inspiring.
Title: Skinny
Author: Ibi Kaslik
Genre: Young Adult; Fiction; Mental Health; Mental Illness; Realistic Fiction; Contemporary; Psychology; Canadian
Goodreads Rating: 3.44/ 5 stars
My Rating: 5/ 5 stars
Pages: 256 ( Paperback)
Publisher: Walker Publishing
Published: January 1, 2008 ( Original Publication: April 17, 2004 HarperCollins Canada)
Summary: Do you ever get hungry? Too hungry to eat?
Holly's older sister, Giselle, is self-destructing. Haunted by her love-deprived relationship with her late father, this once strong role model and medical student, is gripped by anorexia. Holly, a track star, struggles to keep her own life in balance while coping with the mental and physical deterioration of her beloved sister. Together, they can feel themselves slipping and are holding on for dear life.
This honest look at the special bond between sisters is told from the perspective of both girls, as they alternate narrating each chapter. Gritty and often wryly funny, Skinny explores family relationships, love, pain, and the hunger for acceptance that drives all of us.
"Now, at my father's graveside, looking at Jesus' downturned eyes brings back those old feelings. But it's like seeing someone you used to be in love with and being with a bunch of people making fun of him. I understand his terror at being up there all alone, watching the perpetual unfolding drama - the way our lives get cut up by seasons and weakness and change without out noticing."
Skinny, is narrated by two sisters: Giselle and Holly Vasco. Giselle is the oldest of the two and the character whose battle with anorexia drives the plot. Although, as the reader will quickly come to find out, eating disorders are poorly selected coping mechanisms: not the root of an issue. As the story progresses, through the perspectives of both Holly and Giselle, it is revealed that the Vasco family has been carefully treading the waters of a long-kept family secret. Family secrets are like wounds that have been left unattended: they begin to fester and rot.
"When I heard it was a sickness, I went to the library to do some research. The Perfectionists' Disorder. The Girl Who Thought She Had No Stomach. I sat there, very still, with those books spread out on the clean, shiny table. I sat there in that quiet library with the tick of the clock in my ear, looking at those girls with big heads and awful long bones that looked like they hurt poking through the skin."
Through Holly's POV the reader is given a heartbreaking and brutally accurate look at the devastation of an eating disorder as well as a family's distress at having front row seats to the undoing of a loved one.
"Then I remember how Giselle is one of those people who can't wait for things to be over, even fun things, like concerts, or camping. I'm afraid she might just tear through her life without ever enjoying anything, except this, except pain. Still, Giselle's misery is terrible and beautiful, like stained white cotton dresses."
This novel is more than a twenty-year-old girl attempting to navigate both life and her identity; it is more than a teenage girl mourning her father, her sister, and her perceived shortcomings; it is more than a mother witnessing her eldest daughter's self-destruction; it's more than love blossoming in the face of mental health; it's more than an eating disorder. This novel is about the consequences of unrequited love; the consequences of never knowing the love of one's own father.
I cannot recommend this book, enough. It deserves far more recognition; and through giving this book the proper attention, further strides could be made towards bringing more awareness towards eating disorders and mental health.
"We're listening for ghosts at last, my double and I, with our airtight case against love, we ascend the night alley, we go up, up!
- Still, you couldn't let it go, you couldn't be sure that I - in search of stars, a place to rest.
- That I did belong to you, all along."
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- Anisa
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