The Passion of Alice by Stephanie Grant

[lightreads]

Fiction. Narrative of anorexia, hospitalization, sexuality, and love. The smartest thing about this book is the way it repossesses anorexia from popular conception, transforming it from an external "you are sick because you are a woman and you want us to see you thinner" into a deeply internal experience of control, which is far closer to the truth when you're talking about five foot eight women who are ninety pounds and who are dying and who will not eat. Unfortunately, the last quarter of the book falls flat in that way it does when the author realizes she needs something clear and decisive to happen, but can't commit herself to anything. Clever, though, with some complex religious overtones and some interesting, if confused, attempts to draw it all together into a narrative of suffering and beauty and deprivation and control and love. First novel, I suspect.