From Publishers Weekly
This hip debut ruminates on the concept of food as a substitute for love. In satirical, pseudo-profound prose Kwitney skewers her characters, all intentional caricatures, and Columbia University provides an ideal vantage point from which to watch them succumb to insecurities and develop defense mechanisms. Polite, plump, 18-year-old Manya fills her socially empty weekends with bulimic binges. Weekdays, she attends a feminist lit class taught by equally plain, food-obsessed Emilia, who fears spinsterhood. Manya becomes friendly with a seductive, pretentious student who renames herself after Hamlet's overwrought Ophelia, imagines melodramatic dialogues with Death and even plans her own suicide as the ultimate attention-getting device. All three punish themselves physically, but while Manya and Emilia overeat to alleviate loneliness, Ophelia uses drugs and starves herself to prove she's independent. Kwitney insightfully mocks romantic and platonic relationships, forms of nourishment, poseurs and female self-images in a clever novel burdened with a banal title.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Kwitney's first novel is surprisingly funny considering the subject matter, bulimia and society's attitude toward the rotund. The heroine/victim, Manya, is a serious-but-pudgy college student whose circle of acquaintances are the nuts and flakes one finds almost everywhere. Like all lunatics, they take themselves very seriously, making a novel that could have been terrifically depressing terrifically funny. The riot scene at the supermarket is a scream, involving chubby checkers (get it?), crazy coincidences, several love stories, and lots of getting even. Kwitney, a talented newcomer, has a satirical edge that probably comes from her former job as assistant editor at DC Comics. Readers should look forward to more of her wit. Recommended for bingers of all sizes.
- Lynn Thompson, Ozark Regional Lib., Ironton, Mo.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
