Now that we’re all back in school, the freedom to read books that we are actually interested in has mysteriously disappeared. Fortunately, before I started rushing to finish the summer reading assignments that I didn’t do, I found the time to squeeze in just one last interesting book: The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller.
I saw it at the library, read the book jacket, and got it on a whim, and I actually ended up really liking it. The book is about a high school junior named Matt, who longs to run away from the small-minded people in his small town, until his rebellious older sister, Maya, beats him to it. Matt vows to find out what (or who) drove Maya away, even though she assures him that she just needed a break. Matt guesses that the trio of bullies from the soccer team at school hurt her, so he tries to infiltrate their group and figure out what they did. Getting close to them is harder than he thought it would be though, because of Matt’s crush on one of the boys, Tariq (even though Matt suspects he did something horrible to Maya, because he picked her up the night she left). But it doesn’t matterー Matt can block out his feelings for Tariq and find out what happened to his sister using the superpowers he gets from starving himself. Yes, that’s right, skipping meals gives Matt a sixth sense, or so he thinks. In fact, he’s so good at it that he decides to write a guide to doing it, which he calls The Art of Starving. Because Matt believes that eating food makes him less sharp and alert, he avoids eating at all costs, and his mom grows suspicious, so Matt has to come up with creative ways to get rid of his food at mealtimes. As Matt gets weaker and weaker, he gets closer to finding out what actually went down the night his sister left, but another huge secret blindsides him in the process. That’s pretty much the most I can tell you without spoiling the entire thing. It was a really great book, and even though the tone of it was mostly melancholy, there were a lot of funny parts. The book is written in Matt’s perspective, and he is an excellent narrator. He’s so self aware and observant. When Matt first discovered his “powers” I thought the whole book was getting a little crazy, but I think that that was his way of coping with the fact that he felt abandoned by his sister, and perhaps the hallucinations he was having were from undernourishment? If you look at it that way, the whole thing makes sense, but the information he’s able to gain from having the powers, and the way that others are able to notice the effects of them, confuses me. I think this was the author’s intent, because in the end, even Matt is confused about the whole thing. Anyways, this book was good, and I didn’t hate the ending as much as I usually do, because I guess I understand why the author did what he did. If you want to know what I’m talking about, I suggest you go read it, because I honestly couldn’t put it down. Rating: 8 (1 is the worst, 10 is the best) Check it out on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25978892-the-art-of-starving?from_search=true
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