The Stone Girl [Kindle Edition]

Alyssa B. Sheinmel (Author)

Book Description

She feels like a creature out of a fairy tale; a girl who discovers that her bones are really made out of stone, that her skin is really as thin as glass, that her hair is brittle as straw, that her tears have dried up so that she cries only salt. Maybe that's why it doesn't hurt when she presses hard enough to begin bleeding: it doesn't hurt, because she's not real anymore.

Sethie Weiss is hungry, a mean, angry kind of hunger that feels like a piece of glass in her belly. She’s managed to get down to 111 pounds and knows that with a little more hard work—a few more meals skipped, a few more snacks vomited away—she can force the number on the scale even lower. She will work on her body the same way she worked to get her perfect grades, to finish her college applications early, to get her first kiss from Shaw, the boy she loves, the boy who isn’t quite her boyfriend.
 
Sethie will not allow herself one slip, not one bad day, not one break in concentration. Her body is there for her to work on when everything and everyone else—her best friend, her schoolwork, and Shaw—are gone.
 
From critically acclaimed writer Alyssa B. Sheinmel comes an unflinching and unparalleled portrayal of one girl’s withdrawal, until she is sinking like a stone into her own illness, her own loneliness—her own self.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-Sethie, a driven, type-A personality who desperately cares what people think about her and is never satisfied with her rapidly shrinking body, is spiraling into a catacomb of eating disorders and cutting. When she finds out that the guy she thought was her boyfriend is only using her for sex and drugs, she goes into further decline. The author's constant referral to her in the third person is rather jarring at times. Sheinmel depicts the common control and textural issues prevalent among many anorexics in a stark and chilling manner; Sethie relishes the feeling of the hard floor underneath her butt and has an exacting ritual of chugging cold water before bedtime. Although Sheinmel indicts the health-care industry and memoirs by anorexics for inadvertently providing tips for anorexics, she explains Sethie's starvation rituals in meticulous detail. However, in an age of "thinspiration" websites, this is probably a moot point, and the details show the ugliness and heartbreaking aspects of anorexia/bulimia. Sethie receives little intervention from her mother or school officials until the end of the novel, for which there is no explanation. The novel is a bit disjointed at times, but it is still a compelling take on a common theme in young adult literature.-Jennifer Schultz, Fauquier County Public Library, Warrenton, VAα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Review

New York Times Book Review, August 23, 2012:
"Sheinmel proves there’s a lot more to an eating disorder than food, or the lack thereof."

Publishers Weekly, August 20, 2012:
"This drama about a girl on the road to anorexia offers candid insights into the psychological factors underlying the condition. ...Sheinmel's depiction of her self-defeating behavior comes across as vivid and painfully truthful."

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2012:
"Vividly depicted."

School Library Journal (online), January 8, 2013:
"Sethie’s plight will resonate not only with teens who have dealt with eating disorders but with any reader who has felt the unyielding pressure to conform to a just out-of-reach ideal."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 920 KB
• Print Length: 224 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (August 28, 2012)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007GZKQTM
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,924 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Gritty and realistic novel about eating disorders September 7, 2012

By brandileigh2003

Format:Hardcover

Sethie is obsessed about her weight and her body, and it comes across in this powerful novel about body image, eating disorders and friendship.
This hit home on a personal level because I dealt with eating disorders in high school and to this day I still struggle with body image. I think that Sethie's attitudes towards food and how she saw herself was very realistic.
I really liked Ben in this book, and I respected his mannerisms towards Sethie. I think that he was all that she needed even when she didn't get what she wanted. On the other hand, Shaw irritated me so badly, I just wanted to smack some sense into him. That said, I think that he is like so many guys out there, and I don't at all blame Sethie for seeing what she wanted to in their relationship.
The friendship element of this story also kept me glued to the pages. Jane is the type of friend that someone struggling needs. I admit, she did help along the eating disorder without really realizing how deep Sethie was, and later admits that she was only trying to impress her. How she kept calling and kept making the effort with Sethie really impressed me and I wish that I had someone like that in my corner when I was dealing with eds. It wasn't perfect, we also saw them hurting one another, mistrust, and other issues, but ultimately it came down to a nice friendship.
The only thing that I wished was that it was written in first person, because I didn't feel quite as connected to Sethie as I wanted to, and I think that if it weren't in third person, that would have been achieved. Don't get me wrong, I still felt for her and I think the emotion and the obsession definitely came through, I just think it could've been a bit stronger.
NOTE: Not only does this novel deal with eating disorders, it also has drug use, sex, and language. I recommend to mature teens or adults.
Bottom Line: Gritty and realistic novel about eating disorders that I wish was in 1st person to make even more powerful.

5.0 out of 5 stars Brave, important. December 19, 2012

By Courtney

Format:Hardcover

The Stone Girl is a really brave book, and I think even an important one. Sethie is struggling -- with her bad boyfriend, with an eating disorder, occasionally she cuts. She has the support of her best friend, Janey; though it is Janey who passes on one of her worst habits -- how to throw up. I think it's a realistic depiction of how complicated relationships are, and how teenaged girls are searching for anything they control. Sethie doesn't get so thin that she ends up in the hospital, but she is nevertheless in big trouble, and her story is compelling and will stay with you long after you finish the book.

5.0 out of 5 stars could not put it down October 30, 2012

By Lisa2011

Format:Kindle Edition

This novel was enthralling from beginning to end. Sethie's journey thorough bulimia and anorexia is so realistically laid out that I truly read this whole novel in about 20 hours. It is a story every woman can relate to because we all have body issues whether they are small or large. Great read for high school students.

More About the Author

I was born in Stanford, California, and even though I moved across the country to New York when I was six years old, I still think of myself as a California girl.

When I was little, I pretended that I didn't like to read, because my sister loved to read, and I wanted to be different. (I also pretended that I didn't like pizza, because it was her favorite food, I still get sad when I think of all the delicious pizza dinners I missed out on.) By the time I was eight, it was too hard to pretend I didn't like to read, because the truth was that reading was my favorite thing in the world. I loved it so much that when there was nothing to read, I wrote my own stories just to give myself something to read. And when there was no pen and paper to be had, I made up stories and acted them out by myself. I played all the parts, and I was never bored.

When I was eleven years old, I began going to a school in Manhattan called Spence. The teachers there were very supportive of my reading and writing. One teacher there encouraged me to read F. Scott Fitzgerald, and another introduced me to magical realism, and another tried to convince me that there was more to Ernest Hemingway than lessons in fly fishing. (She was right, of course.) And still another let me write a sequel to one of my favorite novels and call it a school project, even though I would have done in my spare time just for the fun of it.

After Spence, I went across town to Barnard College. Once again, I had some of the best teachers in the world encouraging me to write, and introducing me to new authors. One of my very favorite teachers told me to read Joan Didion (and I didn't thank him enough for that), and my other favorite insisted that there was nothing more to Ernest Hemingway than lessons in fly fishing (and I argued with her a lot about that).

After college, I got a job working in an office where I wore high heels and blazers and even the occasional stiff-collared blouse. I thought I would write on the side, but after a while, I stopped writing altogether - for over a year, I didn't write a word except in my journal, a very strange thing for a girl who wrote stories from pretty much the time that she learned how to hold a pen.

But then, when I was 24, I began working at a new job, and the people there introduced me to great new writers, just like the teachers I'd had in school. I began to miss writing. It was boring when I wasn't making up stories to keep myself entertained. And so - slowly, just for the fun of it - I began writing again, and in a couple years I had written the story that would become The Beautiful Between.

I still don't write every day; sometimes I get caught up in other things, and sometimes I'd just rather park myself in front of the TV and watch reruns of The West Wing. But I always find my way back to my computer; I always remember just how much fun writing really is. And the great thing about writing - at least in my experience - is that it comes out best when you're doing it for the very, very fun of it.