Skin

This is a story told backwards. It starts with the shocking scene where 14-year-old Donnie returns home from school to find his 16-year-old sister Karen dead in the hallway and as Donnie retraces the past year, we learn of the anorexia that has overtaken the lives of all the family.

There is a strong, unspoken love between Donnie and Karen. Like any older sister, she regularly throws him out of her room, but she also tries to protect him from their parents’ constant arguments and understands her younger brother in a way their mother and father seem unable to do. But as Karen’s anorexia begins to take hold of the family and the obsession with food and resulting arguments get worse, Donnie becomes more and more isolated. ‘It’s too big, what’s happening,’ he says. ‘It feels like there’s no room for me.’ He floats through school like a ghost. There is no reason that he is so friendless and he isn’t really bullied. It’s just that once he becomes the kid who’s ignored, there seems no way for him to make new friends.

This is an unusually intelligent and perceptive book written in a confident and engaging style. Along with some heart-stopping incidents, the silence that surrounds someone who is anorexic is also an important part of this story. ‘This is happening to me too, you know’ Donnie thinks, but there is no-one who can listen. Amidst the genuine tragedy, the ending also allows the reader some hope for better things to come for Donnie.