Feeling For Bones (Paperback)

by Bethany Pierce (Author)
Key Phrases: bat cave, bethany pierce, Old Maids, Shoe Box, Pastor Evans (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Rainy-afternoon readers could do far worse than to curl up with Pierce's treat of a first novel. Pierce, who teaches English at Miami University in Ohio, introduces readers to Olivia, the 16-year-old budding artist who narrates this lush story. Olivia not only takes readers deep into her struggles with anorexia but introduces a rich cast of characters, like her funny, needy little sister, whose birth name is Claire, but who everyone calls Callapher, short for "Calla Flower." With the help of beautiful Mollie, a free-spirited, devout Christian girl who quickly befriends the family, and Margaret, an old, kind, busy-body great-aunt who is always ready with a helping hand, Olivia and Callapher do their best to settle into their new home, nicknamed "The Shoe Box" because of its tiny size. They've just moved to a small town where Mom and Dad try to make a new life after a scandal forces Dad out of his position as pastor of their old church in Ohio. This story is about family, faith, love, starting over and a whole host of life's curve balls, beautifully told by a girl who has endless heart but a tough mountain to climb when it comes to loving herself as is. (May)
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Product Description
Pressurized family dynamics, and a dysfunctional church experience, force 16-year-old Olivia to seek her own reality. For her self-image as a thinker, painter, and older sister, Olivia determines who she thinks she ought to be.Her baggy clothes and exhaustive calorie scrutiny can't cover up the fact that she is allowing her body to wither away. As Olivia encounters small town prying and a tighter-than-comfortable rental house, her escape becomes her art. And her goal becomes the impossible perfection of airbrushed magazine models.Feeling For Bones is Olivia's story as her struggles become more than physical and she is finally led to the answers she was running from all along.This story opens up a window to the thought processes and struggles of teen and college-aged women who struggle with eating disorders. Young women will find a friend who thinks like they do. And mothers will find a compatriot in the battle to help their daughters deal with body image.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Moody Publishers (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080246288X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802462886
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #30,250 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You won't be disappointed., June 6, 2007

By	FaithfulReader.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

One of Christian fiction's newest and best first novels, FEELING FOR BONES, is just out -- and you don't want to miss it. In this beautifully written debut novel, newcomer Bethany Pierce crafts a memoir-like look at a young minister's daughter who battles anorexia and struggles to discover her inner beauty. Pierce is an unusually gifted writer whose book comes across as excellent literature rather than preaching, a problem with so many message-driven Christian novels.

After a distressing church vote, 16-year-old Olivia's father has lost his job as pastor. She, her younger sister, the oddly named Callapher, and their parents leave Ohio for the Appalachian Mountains where they rent a house owned by their Great-Aunt Margaret and her friend, Ruby, who they call "the Old Maids." Olivia immediately nicknames the two-bedroom, one-bathroom decrepit house "the Shoe Box." "Think we can suffer for Jesus here, don't you?" says her father, ironically.

Olivia's sense of helplessness and emptiness in the face of upheaval comes through Pierce's memorable scenes and some rich passages in the book. "I thought of my father. When I saw him in my mind, he was always just looking up from a book, an expression of bewilderment in his eyes...." Her dad quits going to church and sleeps in on Sunday mornings, while Olivia's mother tiptoes around, trying not to disturb him. "Looking into the shadows of the bedroom, I felt I had physically come face-to-face with the very substance of my own despair," muses Olivia. She is afraid. Controlling her eating is a way --- the way --- Olivia has of controlling her fear.

As Olivia struggles to discover her place in the world apart from her appearance, she finds help in unusual places. "The summer job saved me," she says of her part-time work at a car lot office. Her best friends Mollie and Matthew involve her in creative pursuits and help her focus on things other than food --- or not thinking about food. "I ate without tasting, even, crowding my belly...and still feeling, in a different place, a deep and hollow emptiness."

Pierce is an English professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, as well as an artist. These two talents are evident as the novel unfolds in beautiful, descriptive prose. The opening lines are particularly evocative:

"At the age of sixteen, I suffered recurring nightmares. I was running as hard as I could while my destination on the horizon receded to a pinpoint and vanished like the white pop of an old television screen winking out. I lay in a trance at the bottom of a pool, suffocating beneath an invisible, silent weight; people's voices reached my ears across a great distance, and the reflection of my body was always before me, wavering in myriad and grotesque distortions."

Following Olivia into her interior world is an education in how some women view their bodies. Glued to Olivia's bedroom wall is a collage of beautiful women --- women in stilettos, women in lingerie, women with thick lips, billowing hair and flat bellies --- who Olivia sees as typifying beauty. She recalls her earliest memories of her father reading fairy tales to her, stories of pretty princesses. She remembers her mother buying her bridal magazines as a treat, full of lovely models "getting the prince." Is it any wonder, we realize, that girls grow up with distorted ideas of what true beauty is?

As Olivia paints and is introduced to poetry, her interior life slowly begins to take on importance over her exterior appearance. The end is redemptive without being in any way saccharine.

If you enjoy beautiful writing and rich, dark, intriguing inspirational fiction, then you'll love FEELING FOR BONES. If you only read one new novelist in Christian fiction this year, start here. You won't be disappointed.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of My Favorites!, May 16, 2007

By	Emily Zielke - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was a little skeptical of reading Feeling for Bones because I know so many other "eating disorder" novels that include a girl with a body image problem. But the main focus of the story is not the anorexia of a teenage girl. There are so many relatable elements to the story: family dynamics, teenage relationships, and spiritual realization. The spiritual undertone increases as the characters and plot develop. Pierce completes the story with a beatiful illustration of God's care and healing power. I recommend this story to women who are craving to know more about Jesus Christ and realize him through everday situations. Men would also benefit from the story in their understanding of the thought processes of women during difficult situations in life.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exquisite portrait!, July 31, 2007

By	Laura Smith (Roswell, Georgia USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bethany Pierce's first novel, Feeling for Bones, is an exquisite portrait of a young girl faced with a misperception about her self. Pierce has a talent for seeing through her character's eyes, whether that's a six-year old girl or an elderly aunt and for bringing her reader into the pages of the book. Feeling for Bones has a strong message of salvation that will benefit anyone at any station in life.