Skin - Adrienne Maria Vrettos

This was an INTENSE book. Not because of blood, gore, war, horror, or even the slightest chill factor. Nevertheless, any book that focuses so intensely on the degradation of anorexia is disturbing, and to view it from the unstable younger sibling’ s point of view adds an element that is often lacking in most accounts. It is the little brother who sits by and watches his parent’s split and his sister starve herself; he’s the one who finds the older sister, Karen, dying on the floor in the bathroom; who sits on the front steps as his father screams at his mother; who counts the too-few calories of his only sister at every meal. He has his own issues – lack of friends, “geeky” appearance, almost constant illnesses - but they take a backseat to his family’s issues. By the end of the novel you realize that this is the point: in his attempt to make himself less of a burden and ignore the atrocities taking place in his own life, his invisibility deprives him of a voice as a human being. While, of course, you recognize that he is a very real person, at the same time you feel yourself taking on the same view as him, focusing less and less on the sad state of his own friendless life and more on his crumbling parents and sister and their detrimental affect upon his own mental state. Most authors tackle anorexia through the first-person account or a close friend, but seeing it from a realistic brother’s point of view enhances the tragic tale with an extra jolt of the reality – psychological disturbances do not merely affect and harm the life of the individual, but can actually be extremely detrimental to the family members and loved ones around them. To end I would like to add that the writing itself is incredible; I would highly recommend this book to anyone not only because of its depth and perception, but because of the skill with which it was written.

Chelsea Grimmer

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