Skin and Bones

After months of meetings and tests and evaluations, Jack Plumb, now nicknamed “Bones,” finally agreed to enter a treatment facility to deal with his anorexia. Like many of the teenagers there, he’s not really sure he has a problem. In the facility, Bones meets Lard, his compulsive overeating roommate, and Alice, a returning anorexic determined to get hired by a ballet company. Will therapy and treatment help Bones and his friends begin on the bumpy road to recovery?

“I can still fit into the earrings I wore in Kindergarten.”

Sherry Shahan delves into relatively new territory with her new novel, Skin and Bones. The main character here is a young man with an eating disorder, which is a point of view that readers don’t often encounter. Shahan writes with clear and keen insight, allowing readers to really get inside Bones’s head and better understand the ways that anorexia creates distorted thoughts. It’s understandably hard to read about Bones and Alice actively trying to destroy themselves, but readers will find themselves cheering every time Bones takes a step in the right direction. This is definitely not a light-hearted read, but this novel is more than worth the time readers invest in it.

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