Customer Reviews

Looks

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Walk down the hallway of Valley Regional High on a weekday and you will undoubtedly be surrounded by both teenagers and noise. Students will pass you on the left and on the right. Pieces of conversation will drift by you, exclamations of joy and disappointment punctuating conversations about tests, teachers, parents, and relationships.

Now look closely at two girls who remain quiet: overweight Meghan and thin Aimee. Possibly, they are standing still. Almost impossibly, they might be standing together.

Meghan is a sophomore who, despite her size, feels as though she is invisible - and likes it that way. Unless they are making fun of her, none of her peers really talks to her, but she hears everything - all of the gossip about other students and faculty that is whispered and shouted by those who don't notice her presence.

Amy is a freshman who wants to be heard but does not want to speak up. She joins the Photon editorial collective in hopes of having her poetry published in the issues, but she's somewhat scared about sharing her poems with others. Her reading and writing were habits encouraged by her mother's latest boyfriend, a poetry professor who just moved out of the house. She feels his absence acutely, even more than the absence of food. She eats very little, if at all, and refuses to discuss her eating habits with her mother. She pretends that she has allergies that limit her food choices.

The two girls come together after Aimee is betrayed by Cara, the popular, has-it-all girl who once hurt Meghan. (Please note that in both cases, the pain is emotional, not physical.) Also involved is J-Bar, the jock of the walk, who taunts Meghan every chance he gets. When given the opportunity to put both Cara and J-Bar in their places, what will the girls do? In confronting their bullies, they will have to confront things in their lives that they would rather stay silent, secret. Their voices are unique and ultimately bold, empowering themselves and each other - and readers.

The two protagonists and antagonists aren't the only important people here. There's also Ms. Champoux (pronounced "shampoo") who is "fierce in person" but horrible at reading the morning announcements. Though not a direct confidante of either Meghan or Aimee, she will come into play time and time again in unexpected ways. There are four mentor figures in the book: Aimee's father-figure Bill, no longer a member of her household; Meghan's mother, who is obviously kind and loving, but remains peripheral; Aimee's mother, who is worried about her daughter but tiptoes around her; and Mr. Handsley, Meghan's English teacher, who is not afraid to speak his mind.

Full of information, insight, and emotion, Mr. Handsley is a truly remarkable character. There ought to be more teachers like him, in books and in real life, who challenge their students and want them to succeed. He sees Meghan, even though she thinks she's kept herself well-hidden in this and every other class. He wants his pupils to be active in his class, to really care about what they are reading and discussing. Mr. Handsley is frustrated throughout the book by the obnoxious J-Bar and his friends. When his fuse blows, he must face the consequences of his actions, and the fallout is felt by all of those involved.

This novel says a lot about school status, and it says it well. The writing is lovely, with third-person narration that gets the reader into each girl's mind but also provides the reader with omniscience - something that Meghan's invisibility provides her with, to a point, as well. What the book says about looks, popularity, and power will stay with readers because it is both true AND surmountable, and because of how it is presented.

There are books about writing poetry. Books about reading poetry. Collections upon collections of actual poetry. Sometimes, prose can be like poetry, written so melodically that readers can't help but fall into the rhythm within the first few pages and keep pace until the last sentence. If that story offers an intriguing plot in addition to its creative writing style, readers will be further captured, considering the characters and events carefully as they read and long after they've finished the book. This is one of those books. Madeleine George's descriptive, emotional writing style brought to mind the works of Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), Laura Kasischke (Feathered) and Jane Mendelsohn (Innocence).

With her debut novel, Madeleine George has made herself an author to watch.

This book left me open, exposed, raw. As the jacket notes it's "as painfully honest as your own diary." It takes you back to your most humiliating moment in high school or junior high or even elementary school. We all have them. The event that made you feel so completely alone and pathetic that you wished to be invisible. But this book does more than make you remember your most vulnerable moment. It makes you recall when you made someone else feel that way, and the guilt and shame come rushing back like a tidal wave.

Despite her thundering frame, Meghan Ball is hardly ever seen. She walks ghost-like down the halls of Valley Regional High. People say and do things in front of her as if she doesn't exist, and she almost doesn't until she spies Aimee Zorn. Anorexic Aimee is Meghan's kindred spirit. Like great actors, both use their bodies to say what they cannot with their voices. When pretty, well-liked Cara Roy steals Aimee's poem, Meghan and Aimee work together to get the poem back, and in the process both gain some visibility.

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Wow. I don't even know where to begin, but this novel was fantastic. Meghan is an outcast, and I really felt her pain. I thought this novel was so true to the horrors of high school, because let's face it, people can be harsh. Whenever J-Bar bullied her, I could see it happening. This novel dives deeply into a lot of issues like anorexia, obesity, betrayal, bullying, isolation, invisibility, I could go on. It felt so real to me. This novel really changed the way I look at some people, and I'm so glad I read this.

Highlights: When Cara showed her true colors. Okay, that should so not be a good thing, but I was just glad to see it. Sometimes, it's people like sweet Cara who hurt you the most. Also, when Meghan and Aimee joined forces to bring down the one person that hurt them both, and they do not disappoint (I wish I had guts like these girls, but I have a conscience, which is horrible for revenge). I also really loved the character Mr. Handsley, I wish I had a teacher like him. Ms. Champoux was hilarious as well, especially with the morning announcements.

Also, how awesome is this cover? It's brilliant, as is the hardcover.

Lowlights: The action came a little later than I thought it would, and Meghan's constant following Aimee seemed a bit odd at times. I could understand where she was coming from, and in the end, they were kindred spirits. I also really, really wanted to punch J-Bar in the face. But I think he got what was coming to him. The ending was a little disturbing, because it just made me wonder about a lot of things...

I absolutely loved this book, it looks a bit superficial at first glance like many other books geared towards teen girls but it is really a young adult novel with substance. George accurately depicts the feelings associated with food to many young girls who have eating disorders. I was pleasantly surprised by this book and the many conflicts the two main characters encounter (it isn't just about eating disorders and body image). I would recommend it to everyone, not just teenage girls and feel that everyone can enjoy it especially because of George's writing style.

I don't review too many books on Amazon, and i actually read this book over 18 months ago when it first came out, but the story has stuck with me ever since.

This story has a lot going on -- eating disorders, bullying, divorce (or, more accurately, a significant adult relationship falling apart), etc. A lesser writer would not have been able to handle all this "stuff" going on, but George does so expertly. Never preachy, the language is lyrical and often-times beautiful.

I'd say this book makes my top 20 teen books of all time.

Great job, M. George!

Looks is a really amazing unique book, written in a vividly honest perspective. It is one of the best embodiments of high school awkwardness that I have read in a long time, and that is very refreshing. I was glad to see a teacher, Mr. Handsley, playing a role, giving this book even more parallels to Speak than the already evident ones (narration by a "invisible girl", fly on the wall high schooler). The really striking thing about this is that all of the characters, no matter how minimal a role they play, are extremely well-developed, and you will get emotionally attached to at least one of them, no matter who you are. It's an interesting commentary on life, particularly a teenage one, where everyone tries so hard to break out of that invisible mold we're all at one point or other stuck in. We are all connected, and yet we barely notice it. The moment when the girls are at long last given names to match personalities is a powerful one, reminding us that thin or overweight, we are all one.

Rating: 5/5

This book hooks you from the get-go. Ms. George has a gift for creating characters that command empathy and at the same time, entertain the reader. I found myself laughing at certain parts and then getting emotional in others. The story is about unlikely friendship, dealing with loss, surviving miserable circumstances. The author's voice is both honest and quirky. There is not a false note in this book. I read this book in less than 2 days- It's addictive! It's the kind of book you'd want to read over and over again.

I won't start by summarizing because you can find out what the book's about on the Amazon page, but what I will say is this: this book was amazingly good. I was completely surprised by how much I liked it. I loved the way the author describes the two girls and their experiences, alternating between the two, playing the characters off against each other to highlight not only their differences, but their similarities. And the poetry and writing of the poetry was right on mark -- the exposed, raw feeling of reading what you've written to another person, etc. I would definitely recommend this book -- a great read!

Meghan and Aimee look as different as possible - Meghan is a girl so big she has a hard time getting in and out of certain desks at school, and Aimee is so small that you might think a gust of wind would blow her away. But they do have one thing in common: both of these girls use food as a crutch to get through their hard times. Meghan sees everything in school, even if, despite her size, she is all but invisible to the student body. She sees that Aimee, new in school, is getting involved with a girl who betrayed Meghan not so long ago. And she sees that Aimee isn't so unlike her. Aimee, an aspiring poet, has turned to this girl in the wake of her Mom's split up with her beatnik boyfriend, the only person who ever encouraged her writing. But when Aimee finds herself in over her head with her new friend, it's the fat girl, Meghan, who offers a plan to shed some light on this girl's true colors.

While fairly polarized, Looks is an honest, heartbreaking look at teen eating disorders, without having these disorders define the characters. Meghan and Aimee are not just the fat girl and the thin girl, but they are two lonely girls with different reasons for needing a friend. Illness plays as a backdrop to the real issue: the social hierarchy of highschool.

Madeleine George, Looks (Viking, 2008)

If you're going to read Madeleine George's debut novel, Looks, and you should, there are some things you should know first. This is not one of those teen-lit novels that's been informed by the world of the sitcom. There are no sudden moments of life-changing revelation. There are no easy answers. There is no soft-pedaling of the issues. This is not a book that is full of fluffy-bunny optimism. This is, in fact, exactly the kind of teenlit I keep expecting to see from some sort of "edgy" press like Soft Skull and never quite getting. (If you want a comparison, the closest thing I can come up with is Joi Brozek's Sleeveless, though Brozek's almost dreamlike prose stands in stark contrast to George's stripped-down realism.) And if you know my taste, you'll know that, if this sort of thing is properly written, I consider it good stuff indeed. Which brings us to Looks.

We have two characters here who are, on the surface, opposites, but on the inside are pretty similar. (This is normal stuff for teenlit, right?) Meghan is monstrously fat, a binge eater, but despite that is mostly invisible in the school she's been going to her whole life. Aimee, the new girl, is anorexic. Meghan notices Aimee in the nurse's office, where she often goes when the pressures of school get to be too much, and thinks maybe she's found a kindred spirit, but Aimee gets involved with Cara, the school's resident manipulator. Meghan and Cara have history, and Meghan tries to figure out how to get Aimee out before she gets hurt. I wouldn't normally include this bit, but the jacket copy, PW, and Booklist all did, so it's not a spoiler any more: Aimee does get hurt, of course, and she and Meghan plot Cara's public humiliation as revenge.

There's nothing terribly new here, but when you come into a teenlit novel these days, you have some expectations. I kinda-sorta outlined them back in the first paragraph. George's goal, it often seemed to me while I was reading this, was to subvert every one of those expectations. That is a worthy thing in itself, though you run the risk of being just as predictable (if you veer off in the opposite direction of the herd every time, you'll start going the same way each time). Where this thing gets really clever is that George sticks with the basic teenlit plan, plotwise. She's running with the herd when it comes to what these girls do; this plot is straight out of an episode of any of those horrid shows on the CW. Where she veers off is in who these girls are. "Sure," you're saying to yourself, "but how many teenlit novels do we have with protagonists with eating disorders?" Not like this. And it's not even so much the unapologetic natures of Meghan and Aimee here; it's the lack of judgment on George's part that makes it so startling. You can always hear bias, if you listen hard enough, in an author's word choices or the way the pace changes when addressing a certain character or the situations into which a character is put or any of a dozen other ways; in most novels, even those that didn't hand you some sort of crappy new-age life-changing revelation, you'd see a character like Meghan secretly envying the normal-looking slender girls (though not the anorexic one, of course). Nope. Meghan has enough self-awareness to know that while she uses her weight as a shield, it's not the problem, it's a symptom, and she's aware enough of the world around her to know that the normal-looking girls also have problems; they just have different ways of dealing with them. That's not common in books like this, not at all.

I'm spending hundreds of words dancing around a topic because I don't quite know how to hit it on the head. I'm describing to you the edges of how this is different, but in order to really get the magnitude of the difference, you have to read the book, and you have to pay attention to how Meghan and Aimee are different than your average teenlit protagonists. And as I said at the very start of this, that is something you should do, for this is a book that deserves to be read. *** ½