Customer Reviews

The Hungry Mirror (Inanna Poetry and Fiction) (Inanna Poetry & Fiction)

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The food-obsessed, self-starved young woman who is at the heart of Lisa de Nikolits novel The Hungry Mirror is intelligent, successful, savvy, and completely enslaved by her addiction to starvation and thinness.

This was not an easy novel to read. It was well written and engaging, it's short chapters and first person perspective making it almost journal like in quality. But it's difficult to reconcile the amount of pain and suffering this woman puts herself through just to maintain some fractured ideal body image. Not that I don't understand the compunction to be thin, the societal imperative that thinness equals happiness and beauty. It's just painful to watch someone destroy their body in such a vicious way. Denying oneself not only the value of nutrition but also the pleasure of food itself is utterly cruel. To care so little about yourself that you can do this for years on end... frightening and sad.

Lisa de Nikkolits cuts right to the bone in writing this novel. She creates a character we can really care about, and goes deeply into the heart of eating disorders in such a way that we cannot ignore them. It behooves all of us who are even the tiniest bit diet-obsessed to read The Hungry Mirror- you'll never look at your reflection or your dinner in quite the same way again.

I have been a fat girl ever since I was young. In high school most girls were wearing a 4, I was in a 14. At that time I felt worthless and I didn't like to look at myself in the mirror because it was depressing. There is so much more to being skinny or fat and I will never be the "right size" by the media's standards.

If you have ever felt like you weren't good enough for something as trivial as your looks, read this book. While reading this, I felt like the book was my friend. Lisa understood me in a way that I didn't think anyone else could.

I felt like this book made it's way into my soul. It touched me in ways I never knew a book could. Lisa rocks!

From the first page of the first chapter, this book took me in and wouldn't let me go. Every sentence packed a humorous, insightful and frequently devastating punch taking me into a world I didn't know much about and on a journey I won't soon forget. If you're looking to read something beautifully written and telling a story with substance, choose The Hungry Mirror. You won't be disappointed.