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Madeleine George, Looks

Page history last edited by Lisa Gordis 15 years, 3 months ago

Bibliographical information:

George, Madeleine. Looks. New York: Viking Penguin, 2008.

 

Brief summary:

The catalog summary reads "Two high school girls, one an anorexic poet and the other an obese loner, form an unlikely friendship," but this seems to me even more of an oversimplification than are most one-sentence summaries. Yes, the two main characters are obese and skinny, and both clearly have unhealthy relationships with food--Meghan eats to the point of black-out, and Aimee restricts her food in ways that lead her mother to suspect anorexia (though the novel doesn't take us into the realm of medical diagnosis). But the novel doesn't wrap the food issues up neatly, or even suggest that they are the heart of the matter. Rather, its focus is the strategies these young women use to navigate high school life, the forms of invisibility they choose and suspend, and their acute observation of the people around them.

 

Comments:

This is a compelling and gracefully written book. It's both funny and painful, and it has both the excitement that made me want to read to the end quickly to see what happens and enough complexity that I wanted to ponder the conclusion for a while before returning to reread.

 

Grade/Age level:

Grades 6 and up

 

Cautions:

 

If you like this book, you might also like . . .

 

--Lisa Gordis

 

 

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