Hunger Point

Medoff, Jillian

ISBN 10: 0694517909 ISBN 13: 9780694517909

Publisher: Harperaudio, 1997

Synopsis

When her younger sister is hospitalized for anorexia, twenty-six-year-old Frannie finds herself cut adrift, unable to hold a job or relate to her parents, until her sister's shocking suicide jolts her into action.

About this title

Review:

This ambitious, ribald, and extremely honest first novel attempts to unravel the familial and social pressures that drive two sisters into a life of serious food abuse. One survives, the other doesn't. Frannie, though she does not succumb completely to anorexia, is near the breaking point, and Hunger Point takes us along on her painful and often funny emotional odyssey of rebirth, detailed with her family's embattled love and her own self-loathing. Food is not the only matter of the body that is treated brilliantly; the author's soul-baring depiction of both the miseries and pleasures of sex from a woman's point of view is unforgettable and occasionally terrifying.

From the Back Cover:

For the women in Frannie Hunter's family, food is sort of a religion. Frannie and her genius younger sister, Shelly, have felt that 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.

All of which seems perfectly normal until Shelly takes dieting a step too far and descends into a nightmare battle with anorexia and bulimia. When Shelly is sent to a psychiatric hospital, Frannie fells confused and angry. She wants to understand and help her sister, but she's already drowning in her own nowhere life. As Frannie struggles to keep her sanity, her wicked sense of humor and her family intact, she gradually begins to discover the awful truth -- that eating isn't the answer, and the only way up is out.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harperaudio
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0694517909
• ISBN 13: 9780694517909
• Binding: Audio Cassette