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Summary
Summary
A dark, edgy, voice-driven literary debut novel about twin sisters that explores body image and queerness as well as toxic diet culture and the power of sisterhood, love, and lifelong friendships, written by a talented protégé of Roxane Gay.
Rose and Lily Winters are twins, as close as the bond implies; they feel each other's emotions, taste what the other is feeling. Like most young women, they've struggled with their bodies and food since childhood, and high school finds them turning to food--or not--to battle the waves of insecurity and the yearning for popularity. But their connection can be as destructive as it is supportive, a yin to yang. when Rose stops eating, Lily starts--consuming everything Rose won't or can't.
Within a few years, Rose is about to mark her one-year anniversary in a rehabilitation facility for anorexics. Lily, her sole visitor, is the only thing tethering her to a normal life.
But Lily is struggling, too. A kindergarten teacher, she dates abusive men, including a student's married father, in search of the close yet complicated companionship she lost when she became separated from Rose.
When Lily joins a cult diet group led by a social media faux feminist, whose eating plan consists of consuming questionable non-caloric foods, Rose senses that Lily needs her help. With her sister's life in jeopardy, Rose must find a way to rescue her--and perhaps, save herself.
Illuminating some of the most fraught and common issues confronting women, Thin Girls is a powerful, emotionally resonant story, beautifully told, that will keep you turning the pages to the gratifying, hopeful end.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Clarke's raw debut explores the ravages of eating disorders and extreme dieting on identical twins Rose and Lily. As the twins enter high school in the mid-2000s, Rose tries to fit in with a group of popular girls who pressure each other to commit to an apple-a-day regimen. Lily is ostracized from the group and turns to overeating while her sister starves herself. Rose, now 24, narrates from inside the walls of treatment center for eating disorders, detailing the twins' lives leading up to that point in sections headed by year, age, and weight, and highlighting Rose's growing insecurity in relation to her sister ("I was her stunt double.... People looked at me and saw almost-Lily"). After Rose is discharged and assigned to live with Lily for a probationary period, it's Rose who feels the need to offer support: Lily is in a relationship with the husband of a lifestyle guru and subjecting herself to a diet consisting of zero-calorie bars, and her life seems to be falling apart despite her excitement over her weight loss. While Clarke's prose slips occasionally into pedestrian observations, the sisters' bond is strongly palpable. This page-turner makes for an illuminating, ultimately hopeful look at the constant struggle women face regarding their body image. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (June)
Kirkus Review
A first-time novelist explores the abuse women inflict on themselves, the abuse others inflict upon them, and the intersection of the two. When they were small, Lily and Rose were essentially indistinguishable--even to themselves. As they approached adolescence, though, Lily, the outgoing, people-pleasing twin, had become everyone's favorite while obstinate, awkward Rose became her sister's shadow. Their relationship to each other changed again when Rose discovered a talent for enduring the fad diets imposed by the leader of their clique. As Rose stops eating altogether, Lily starts eating more and more. Rose recounts this history as she embarks on her second year in a clinic where she is supposed to be recovering from anorexia but is really consuming just enough calories to avoid force-feeding. She likes the comforting routine of the clinic and the company of other "thin girls." It's only when Rose realizes that Lily is in a dangerously abusive relationship that she becomes determined to return to the outside world. Rose is a strange and prickly character, constantly interrupting her narration with bits of trivia from the random assortment of books available at the clinic. She is both truthful and wily, and her powers of insight are prodigious--except when she's analyzing herself. It takes her a very long time, for example, to discover that her efforts to shrink her body down to nothingness are related to her unwillingness to accept her own sexuality. The story she tells is as gripping as a thriller, but it's Clarke's language that truly makes this novel special. She writes with a lyricism that not only encompasses the grotesque and the transcendent, but also sometimes commingles the two. When Rose finds a collection of short fiction Lily has written, these harrowing little fables bring the latent otherworldliness of the novel as a whole to the surface. Incisive social commentary rendered in artful, original, and powerfully affecting prose. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In this debut novel from Kiwi author Clarke, readers meet identical twins Lily and Rose. Throughout childhood, the pair shared emotions and sensations: Lily could taste Rose's excitement, could smell her rage, could feel her sister's every worry in her own heart. In late adolescence, Rose developed a serious eating disorder, which required in-patient treatment, and was sequestered indefinitely to a rehabilitation facility. While Rose was withering away in their teenage years, Lily was gaining weight rapidly.The physical differences between the formerly co-dependent twins became striking, but they grew apart emotionally as well. The twins' family was consumed by Rose's struggle with anorexia, but didn't give much thought to Lily's rapid weight gain. It's not until the present, when Lily is dating an abusive married man, that Rose must assume the role of care-taking twin. While grappling with the deaths of friends she met in treatment, Rose has to swoop in and solve her twin's less visible but equally lethal problem. The novel is a breathtaking and sobering account of eating disorder treatment and mortality.
Library Journal Review
DEBUT Lily and Rose share a special bond reserved for twins, acutely feeling and sensing each other's pain. Beginning in their teens, both women struggle to fit in while contending with family issues and opposite eating disorders. Lily overeats to try to fill a void and mask her pain, and she eventually becomes more than three times her anorexic sister's size. Rose attempts to gain a sense of control over her life by monitoring what she eats (or doesn't eat). Each twin needs the other's help, and each tries to save the other from self-destruction while really needing to save herself. Told from Rose's point of view of past and present events, this debut novel is an often dark and difficult read. Clarke adeptly makes readers feel the sisters' pain using blunt and vivid descriptions of eating disorders and strained (and sometimes abusive) relationships while suggesting that hope and unconditional love might allow them to recover, both physically and emotionally. VERDICT Recommended for readers who like well-drawn, character-driven stories but can also handle detailed descriptions of eating disorder behavior. [See Prepub Alert, 12/2/19.]--Samantha Gust, Niagara Univ. Lib., NY
