The Stone Girl
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4.5 • 8 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
She feels like a creature out of a fairy tale; a girl who discovers that her bones are really made out of stone, that her skin is really as thin as glass, that her hair is brittle as straw, that her tears have dried up so that she cries only salt. Maybe that's why it doesn't hurt when she presses hard enough to begin bleeding: it doesn't hurt, because she's not real anymore.
Sethie Weiss is hungry, a mean, angry kind of hunger that feels like a piece of glass in her belly. She’s managed to get down to 111 pounds and knows that with a little more hard work—a few more meals skipped, a few more snacks vomited away—she can force the number on the scale even lower. She will work on her body the same way she worked to get her perfect grades, to finish her college applications early, to get her first kiss from Shaw, the boy she loves, the boy who isn’t quite her boyfriend.
Sethie will not allow herself one slip, not one bad day, not one break in concentration. Her body is there for her to work on when everything and everyone else—her best friend, her schoolwork, and Shaw—are gone.
From critically acclaimed writer Alyssa B. Sheinmel comes an unflinching and unparalleled portrayal of one girl’s withdrawal, until she is sinking like a stone into her own illness, her own loneliness—her own self.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite some predictable elements, this drama about a girl on the road to anorexia offers candid insights into the psychological factors underlying the condition. Seventeen-year-old Sethie Weiss, a student at an elite girls' school in Manhattan, is entangled in a destructive relationship with a boy who treats her callously. Simultaneously, Sethie becomes increasingly obsessed with her weight, wishing she could look more like her new friend, Janey. What follows is an account of Sethie's regimented eating habits, her flirtation with cutting, her experimentation with drugs, and her inevitable breakup with the boy she thinks she loves. As Sethie eats less, she becomes more reclusive, isolating herself from those who care about her: Ben, a big-brother figure who shares her passion for literature; Janey, who continues to call Sethie a friend; and Sethie's mother, who remains silently concerned about her daughter. Sethie's redeeming characteristics are overshadowed by her fixations, with the third-person narration giving her voice an authentic, detached quality. Regardless of Sethie's distance from readers, Sheinmel's depiction of her self-defeating behavior comes across as vivid and painfully truthful. Ages 12 up.
