I should not have read this book so close to Keeping the Moon. That story ticked me off so I’m not sure if my displeasure with this book is because of my problems with how weight is portrayed in the aforementioned title or if I’m just tinhatting. Although I made a wish there about exteriors. Perhaps I should have been more specific.

This story is wrapped up in a pretty, pretty package. I have plenty of positives for the novel itself and the writing is at the top of the list. The language is amazing. I can climb to a mountain top to wave a big sign with the title on the book that says “READ FOR THE PROSE BUT BEWARE THE SKEEVY UNDERTONES.”

They are skeevy, too. The copy for the story grossly misrepresents who and what the story is about. When I finished, I browsed some pro-ana communities just to remind myself how much more seriously people take the stick-thin who are living on the edge of their own bones. I couldn’t decide if Meghan’s weight and her invisibility was a commentary on how society at large brushes obese people aside as an impossible problem to fix, how organizations focus on FIGHTING OBESITY and making it all about the weight instead of simply focusing on health. It’s the latter that can create girls like both Meghan and Aimee. I was still undecided even after all that. Instead of making up my mind I ate some gummy lifesavers. Tasty and less frustrating than this novel.

Despite the fishbowl point of view it is never the kind of book it promises to be. Meghan is fat and Aimee is anorexic and the book claims to be all about their story and how they find each other and how they don’t change, but maybe find a better path—one that’s less lonely. Instead of the loneliness eating away at them in the form of their relationship with food their friendship gives them an outlet. In truth this is all about the thin girl and her woe and angst. Anything to do with Meghan is in the context of Aimee’s story. It’s easy to say, “Without Meghan, Aimee wouldn’t have a story!” but I can’t invest in that, either. We see so many more sides to Aimee than Meghan. To me, Meghan becomes invisible in much of the novel and that’s not what’s supposed to happen when a novel is telling you that person’s story. Her life away from school was focused on a handful of times and it felt superficial—an afterthought.

I am tired of the fat girls playing second string. Know what it feels like? Well, overeating and binging are bad, sure, but anorexia is so much worse than that. Let’s focus on the angst of the one that treats eating carrots like a religious experience and let the fat girl’s story inform it. By the way, the thin girl is going to have a caring mother, but the fat girl is going to have a mother who only sees what she wants to see (that’s almost a quote I wanted to punch something holy crap).

Meghan takes a backseat to Aimee and it’s such a disappointment. She’s characterized like a shadow, only coming out to a) stalk people or b) seek revenge. One plus: her talents for observation were fantastic because without them everything and everyone would have been flat. I’m not sure if that’s a shining endorsement. Other than that, she’s silent. The only one who makes her stand out? Aimee. What causes her to do so? Aimee’s troubles and her own desire for revenge. All in all, I’m not sure how likable Meghan is as a person.

Am I interrogating the text from the wrong perspective?

This high school and these characters are every bitchy jock and oblivious, backstabbing girl from any teenage experience. The characterization is like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise toxic landscape of fat girls are always going to be second, even if books that claim to be about their story. There wasn’t one scene; I waited the whole book for one scene where Meghan seems to be Meghan, not in context of where Aimee is and what she needs and how can I get her to be my friend and revenge time hooray and I never got it (even the scene with the teacher was Aimee-infused!).

Meghan is there is tell Aimee’s story and she was necessary to the plot because she needed to be invisible and the best way to make her invisible was to make her fat, because fat people aren’t really people, they’re nonentities; they’re like furniture, just in case you didn’t know. Society erases the Other, erases the lumps and erases the curves and leaves a space small enough for only a certain kind of person that’s fit to be visible. There are hints of how Aimee will recover, hints of how Aimee’s mother will make things better, how Meghan will be her answer, but there is none of this foreshadowing for Meghan. She only gets to be an entity in Aimee’s story of finding her way back from the brink. It’s enraging. Did George mean to do this? Did she mean for this to be a critique as well as a story of girls finding a connection that will take them away from harmful habits? I can’t decide.

I actually find I agree with Becky, the only reviewer I can find who seems to agree with me about Meghan. She said:

While I wanted to love this book—really wanted to love it—I found myself increasingly annoyed by a few things. Nothing major. But the fact that “the fat girl” was always “the fat girl” and sometimes the “friendless fat girl” or the “lonely fat girl” but hardly ever just Meghan was something that really really really really annoyed me. Fat wasn’t only a label, it was the defining characteristic for Meghan. And that just doesn’t sit well with me.

Although I disagree with Becky that this sort of thing is “nothing major.” This ripping away of the identity of people who are fat is a major problem. When you let someone take away your name, that’s serious, because you let them take you and Meghan had a terrible problem letting the other kids unname her. George might have done this on purpose to highlight how invisible she was; so much so she didn’t even think of herself as a person, but I don’t think it worked in the favor of that end at all. It’s just frustrating that I haven’t seen anyone else comment on this.

I am glad for the end, which at least suggests, if not a happy resolution, a better beginning for both girls in the context of their emotional health, but I cannot get past how much Meghan is used for her talents and skills, how her weight is a negative but yet still an asset. This is not really Meghan’s story; this is Aimee’s story. I think it’s an important distinction the copy should have made clear. Simply because both girls are in the book does not mean the story told reflects both of them equally. Looks does not do that.

I will continue to pretend there is more social critique in this book than their actually is. Fooling yourself with literary lies: RECOMMENDED.

1. Look Books
2. Abby (the) Librarian
3. Teen Book Review
4. bookshelves of doom
5. Becky’s Book Reviews
6. Bildungsroman