Summary:
Los Angeles fashion model Helen Troy wasn't always skinny. Drastic weight loss has given her everything - money, confidence, attention, respect. Being thin has legitimized her, and starvation has become an addiction.
Following an encounter with a seemingly "perfect" rival model who destabilizes Helen's shaky self-confidence and shatters her fragile allusion of control, she's sent into a tragic tailspin that will take her to the lowest depths of hell. Nightmarish versions of herself begin materializing in mirrors, and her tried-and-true coping mechanisms stop working. Reality comes apart at the seams as Helen's disease manifests in increasingly self-destructive fashions, forcing her to ask herself . . .
What does perfection look like, and how much would you sacrifice to obtain it?
My Thoughts:
Disclaimer: I have not personally struggled with an eating disorder, so I will not be talking about whether it is an accurate description or not.
The main character, Helen Troy, is the narrator. These are her thoughts and conversations from her point of view. This is as expected from Morrison's writing. It is also a very different side of the horror genre for him as well. He is known for extreme horror, and this is more horror rooted in realism.
Helen is, well, obsessed. She was bullied as a child for being "fat", which turned her to the direction of "thinspo" and eating disorders. Helen has pretty much no friends too. Most people are just acquaintances, and the closest thing to a real relationship is a fwb kind of thing with a guy named Jasper. She attends therapy, but her counselor makes the situation worse in a way. He is incapable of listening and giving good advice, which is literally his job description. He also encourages her disordered eating habits. Helen starts seeing a "slug" version of herself in the mirror as well as a "skeleton" version of herself.
When she hits a breaking point, she goes to seek a rehab facility that specializes in eating disorders. But they don't let her in, saying that she had been there before and attacked a worker. Helen has no recollection of this, but is forced to leave. She takes this as a sort of sign that she doesn't need to get help, and lets her eating disorder slowly kill her.
I honestly wish this was longer. It is never specified, but Helen seems to also have schizophrenia. The book left me with a melancholy aftertaste. The character never gets help, but she doesn't die at the end either. We're left with the assumption she was dying, but we don't know how close she is to death. The set of characters are mostly undeveloped, which is understandable for a novella.
I'm at the point where I will probably never dislike Morrison's books. So yes, I recommend it.
My Rating: 4 stars
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