I’ll say this: This book had a lot of potential for me when I picked it up. It’s an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, it’s the subject of rave reviews on the interwebs, Robin McKinley, (a Newbery winner) called it “Brilliant.” … Unfortunately, Robin McKinley, ALA, the interwebs and I disagree. Or, more probably, we’re just not looking for the same things.

I expect books that involved eating disorders (for whatever age of reader) to give a realistic account of what it is to have an eating disorder and provide a story arc that addresses that issue in a plausible and satisfying manner. What may be satisfying to me, however, may be different from an unbiased reader. Yes, it’s personalizing a medium that’s meant to be read by everyone, not just people with eating disorders, so please take me my comments with a grain of salt. But overall, Looks just doesn’t do it for me.

George does an excellent job of creating a perfect WASPy high school hell, chock full of apathy from the students, teachers, and administrators. I’ve met a version of all the characters in real life, from Ms. Champoux the highschool administrator dreaming of a career in juvenile corrections, and J-Bar the bronzed horrible antagonist with a secretly soft heart for puppies and basketball, to Mr. Handsley the passionate teacher who believes in the protagonists, but ultimately is too non-conformist for his own good. Come to think of it – I enjoyed the peripheral characters more than the main ones. But even though Meghan and Aimee are more pitiable than likeable, their narratives are constructions of very authentic voices.

The whole idea of being seen or invisible in society with regard to appearance is a compelling issue in high school and beyond. I love that Meghan could literally get away with things most kids would think impossible, simply because of apathy, indifference or disgust on the part of her teachers and other students. While it seems that Aimee is trying to make herself literally disappear, she wanted very much to be seen and loved, like Meghan. She is seen by her classmates and by her family, but also like Meghan, she very rarely has the words to make herself understood or to communicate her needs outside of her poetry.

Other than the plot and the niceties revolving around the ideas incorporated into the text, I’m not as pleased with the book as most critics for the simple reason that I feel that almost nothing is resolved. It’s as if George cooks up a huge pot of pasta, lets it boil, then dumps it all over the floor and walks away.

I find the plot to be a bit predictable – perhaps I’m a bit too well-versed in the evils of adolescent girls. Aimee – an amateur poetess – joins the school’s literary magazine and meets Cara Roy, a beautiful, multi-talented golden girl who takes her under her wing. We learn that Cara and Meghan used to be best friends, then “something happened” during a summer in middle school to disband the friendship and make Meghan (and Cara) who she is today. Aimee opens up to Cara by sharing her poetry, one of which is about anorexia. Cara reveals that she used to be anorexic as a result of this same incident, although neither she or Meghan never intimates to Aimee what has happened. At this point, we can all see what’s coming – Cara betrays Aimee’s trust and creativity as well. Aimee turns to Meghan, who has been trying to warn her about Cara. They decide to make Cara pay for her wrongdoings. They get even.

There’s also the convenient sub-plot of Life at Home. Aimee hates her mom for being so busy and she misses Bill, the hippie poet who used to be her mom’s live-in boyfriend but has since moved on. She wishes he would be her father and support her interests and feed her lime Jell-O, but the professor of literature has other things on his plate besides the daughter of an ex-girlfriend. (Think Hippie Hank Moody). When Bill says that Aimee should rely on her mother for support, Aimee releases herself of her relationship with Bill not without effort, but not really with conflict either. Aimee’s relationship with her mom is no better. When her mother says that she’s proud of Aimee for being creative and writing her poetry, and that Bill would be proud of her, too, Aimee lies to her and manipulates her. I think this is supposed to be the turning point in their relationship, but it falls flat. The reader doesn’t actually meet Meghan’s family until she brings Aimee home one day. She has a kind of lovely, almost Stepford home. Her mother and her little brother Jesse stay at home and make play-doh and bread together. She does comment about her mother’s blithe denial of life and reality, but it’s never developed further.

The conflict with Cara and J-Bar is probably the most unsatisfactory of all. They work out a method of revenge that humiliates them both, but all the reader gets in the end is a final confrontation in which Meghan sticks up for Cara, but then Cara turns on both Meghan and Aimee saying “the two of you deserve each other.” Really, no one is satisfied. This is a prime opportunity for all of them to talk about what has happened either over the years or the past few weeks but instead it just becomes a one-sided confrontation. Nothing has changed and no one feels better for it.

Perhaps this was supposed to be the message – that sometimes life just doesn’t resolve itself. People stay angry, bad blood remains bad, and even prime opportunities for climax don’t result in denouement. But in the final and following chapter and narrative of the book – things seem to be … resolved. Aimee and Meghan are a unit. We are invited to look at them. How they are visible together. How they … eat lunch together? This brings the reader to the slight issue of the eating disorders. Won’t someone please think of the eating disorders? What happened to those pesky things? Aimee eats? In school? With Meghan? What about Meghan? Does she still eat herself unconscious? Eating disorders don’t spontaneously self-correct upon revenging yourself. Especially if it’s not revenge that’s fulfilling. Um, you guys … the kids are not alright!

Eating disorders are strange extra characters in this story. While Aimee and Meghan never actually admit to their disorders to their families or even each other, it’s abundantly apparent that they are effected by anorexia and binge eating disorder, respectively. There’s also the issue of Cara’s supposed anorexia, from which she is in recovery. Everything is dropped, never to return again. And yes – it’s not about the food but considering that certain other things were not really brought to conclusion, I can’t imagine how these intense emotions that are expressed through relationships with food would be changed. On the whole, while eating disorders provided a potentially intriguing backdrop for the anguished story of adolescent women, I feel in the end they were a clumsily used trope rather than the expressive vehicles they could have been.

I admit – I had a very personal reaction to this book. At first, I thought that I would probably not recommend it for young women who struggle with eating disorders, since it might be seen as partially triggering. Isabelle and Amanda enumerate the “tips and tricks” of how to binge and purge more effectively throughout the book. Friend doesn’t pull any punches as far as illustrating how chaotic, desperate and horrifying binge eating can be, and for those empathetic readers who are going through the process of recovery themselves, it might be all too familiar. However, as I thought about it more, these passages, while powerful, might be considered almost superficial when considering the book’s larger message. Here’s why:

Perfect emphasizes that eating disorders are often caused by other emotions beyond a desire to be thin. Yes, Isabelle comments about her “fat” appearance, but it’s not really her main preoccupation. The death of her father, her mother’s grief, her feelings of alienation from her family are all much more present in the book than her desire to be thin. More importantly, the “fat” part of her concern is never present during any of the binge/purge scenes, which are mainly reactive to her feelings about her father. Ashley, too, while making the obligatory comments about her thighs while looking in her underwear, is symptomatic as a result of the absenteeism of her parents and her loneliness, rather than a fear of fat. While at first it bothered me that these reasons were “too facile” – that they didn’t really offer up the larger picture that some issues which lead to eating disorders are more vague and harder to pinpoint that absentee or deceased parents. Then I decided that this book is for pre-teens and I was reading too much into it with personal bias and maybe I should relax a little bit. ^^

While, as I mentioned before, Friend’s writing spares no expense in the description of the “gory details” of bingeing and purging, there was never any mention of the fact that Ashley or Isabelle gained or lost weight because of their symptoms. It’s given that Ashley looks gorgeous all the time, but Isabelle never comments on changes in her own weight. The fact that there is never any “positive” outcome of all their behaviours is another reason I think that this book is “safe for consumption,” if you will. Also, it’s interesting and gratifying to see an author writing about bulimia, rather than anorexia. One problem I have with the treatment of eating disorders in the media and society at large is that while people (in general) are perfectly happy to discuss restrictive behaviours and show endless pictures of emaciated models, no one seems to be willing to talk about bulimia or binge-eating disorder because, well, it’s messy. Hopefully, an increase in narratives like this will work to make this disorder less taboo and illustrate the prevalence of its effects on our culture.

Finally, Perfect spreads the same message I think we should all keep in mind – that eating disorders don’t only affect the people who “look like it.” They can also be wreaking havoc in the life of that quiet girl of average weight sitting in the corner of the cafeteria that never gets noticed.