Prizes and Awards:
Amazon.ca/Books in Canada
First Novel Award Shortlist 2004
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Product Description
Books in Canada
Most of the novels I’ve read so far have been disappointing in various degrees. Most writers have not been able to sustain voice, story, plot and characterization. There have been few surprises. Until now the WOW factor has been minimal. However, with a big cherry popsicle on the remarkable cover (designed by Greg Tabor) this novel is like a beautiful dew-bedecked rose growing out of a briar patch. At the beginning, Giselle Vasco is 21, and a functioning anorexic, taking a leave from medical school to get her life back together. The epigraph, from Cathy Caruth, really sums up the essence of the novel: “History, like trauma, is never simply one’s own. History is precisely the way we are implicated in each other’s traumas.” And traumas there are-misunderstandings, withheld information, dark secrets, perverse behavior seemingly for no reason, effected by Giselle herself, her younger sister Holly, and both her parents. Giselle has a feeling of abandonment, of worthlessness in spite of her academic brilliance, a feeling that at first appears unfounded. But gradually details emerge revealing that what at first appears as paranoia, is based more on fact than fantasy. We learn a great deal about anorexia, though never in such a clinical way as to obscure the story. There is a deep sense of foreboding throughout, and while we hope that Giselle will be able to overcome her illness and function normally, it appears less and less likely as the novel progresses. In spite of the serious subject matter there is sneaky humor throughout, and we come to love Giselle in spite of her self-destructiveness, and understand the impossibly messy lives of her family. An extraordinarily fine debut.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
W.P. Kinsella (Books in Canada)
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up–In her first year of med school, 22-year-old Giselle Vasco seems to have it all together. But a lifetime of bitter relations with her deceased father is slowly catching up, and she falls into a downward spiral that her mother and her younger sister, Holly, are powerless to stop. Skinny, though, is much more than a study of one young woman's battle with anorexia. What starts as Giselle's story quickly develops into a rich and powerful tapestry of a whole family. When Thomas and Vesla Vasco emigrated from Hungary in the 1970s to escape communism's rigid caste system, Vesla was already pregnant, and Thomas had always questioned whether the baby was his. His doubts color his whole relationship with his older daughter, and when Holly is born eight years later, the divide becomes more apparent. Holly, a natural athlete, struggles to understand and avert her sister's self-loathing. The chapters alternate between the sisters' voices, and the ability to see the events unfolding through their eyes adds a depth and a poignancy that would not have been possible with a single narrator. Kaslik's first novel hits the mark with characters with whom teens will empathize, and tackles a relevant and painful subject with grace.–Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Schools, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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