NOTE: I received a free copy of The Appetites of Girls from Penguin’s First to Read program. I received no other compensation for this review and all opinions below are entirely my own.
The Appetites of Girls is not an easy nor quick read. It is not a book that you pick up, flip through, and say, “Wow, that’s an awesome book.” It is a book that sits heavy in your gut, exactly like the feeling you have when you overeat.
The reasoning for this is not because the novel is not well-written or enjoyable. The language and characterization is rich and in-depth, as if every word is a tasty morsel cooked to perfection. In fact, it is one of the best books in the coming-of-age genre. It is because I found myself identifying so personally with some of the heart-wrenching scenarios in the book that I would either get lost on long thoughtful tangents or would have to stop reading because I was crying or spending most of my time voicing my social work opinion on the girls before realizing that they were fictional and would not do as I said.
This is a book that I think will earn many different reactions from many different people, based on each reader’s shape, size, experience, and perspective. Each character has personal traits and flaws that define them and can be assessed as positive or negative depending on where you shine the light (as I mentioned before, I am a social work major and spend most of my time trying to get a holistic perspective on situations and life in general, mostly by spending my free time analyzing film and literature). As someone who has struggled with body problems since puberty, I identified with Ruth and Fran’s struggles to either gain the appearance that society deemed appropriate or to profess their love for their bodies the way that they are. I envied how effortlessly Opal seemed to be able to run tirelessly, or how Setsu could ignore hunger pangs. Each of the girls tells her own touching story of how she found herself, and long after you put it down, you wonder, “Now what will my story be?”
This is a book about the things we hunger for - be it success, love, or, of course, food. It is about satiating that hunger and making yourself happy. It is also about the people and ideas which judge us for our appetite, deny us what we want most in life, and how we need to move past these things and find strength in the right place: within ourselves.
This is a book mothers should read with their daughters with a ton of pauses to stop and discuss the material. This is food for thought, and you need to be able to spend some time digesting it.