Hunger Point
Food has always been a pleasure and a curse for 26-year-old Frannie and the women of her family. Raised by a mother obsessed with the ritual of dieting, a woman seemingly more in love with food than with her daughters, Frannie and her younger sister, Shelly, have undergone a lifetime of fat camps and Weight Watchers programs and have experienced the sugar high of consuming a box of Girl Scout cookies, the illicit thrill of midnight binges, and the triumph of fitting into a pair of size 6 jeans. Frannie's family acts as if this fascination with food is normal, until Shelly takes dieting too seriously and descends into the nightmare of a life-threatening eating disorder. With devastating insight, Jillian Medoff looks deep into the heart of an American family and emerges with a first novel that is at once heartbreakingly honest, wickedly funny, and wonderfully life-affirming: a warm, witty, and perceptive look at a tough yet tender young woman struggling to understand a younger sister battling anorexia and bulimia, bewildered parents who have grown apart, and her own despair at ever finding the right job, boyfriend, or place of her own.