Falmouth High School Library

Freymann-Weyr, G. (2009). After the Moment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 328 pages.
Leigh Hunter thinks that he is going to have an ordinary junior year in high school, but when his stepsister’s father dies and she asks him to move from New York to Maryland to be there for her, his plans are changed. Leigh has lived with his mother since his parents’ divorce, and living with his father proves to be an interesting challenge. Leigh meets a girl named Maia, who is slowly recovering from anorexia and self-injury (in the past, she burned herself with lit cigarettes and cut the bottoms of her feet). They fall in love over the summer, but their relationship is tried by a traumatizing event where Maia is date-raped by fellow students, and it is captured on film. I found this book to be interesting in that I can’t quite place a finger on what demographic it is geared toward. It was different to read about “issues” that are generally associated with females (i.e. anorexia, self-injury) from the male perspective. Readers are informed from the beginning that their relationship does not last; it doesn’t work – which is a sharp contrast to the copious talk and comparisons to romance novels (Leigh’s mother writes them, Leigh’s stepsister reads them). Leigh also struggles internally with what road his life is meant to travel (if/where he should go to college), whether or not he believes in God, and what the war in Iraq means to him and the country. Sometimes the comments on the war in Iraq were a bit… off-color… out of place, even.

Littman, S.D. (2009). Purge. NY: Scholastic Press. 234 pages.
This is the fictional account of a girl who has been checked into a treatment center for bulimia. Janie Ryman takes us through the day-to-day activities, including mealtimes, where the “barfers” (people suffering from bulimia) and “starvers” (people suffering from anorexia) are at odds because the barfers want to eat everything as quickly as possible, where the starvers hide and avoid coming to meals – and one can eat until everyone is at the table. The story is moved along by Janie’s entries in the journal that she has been given by the psychiatrist at the treatment center. The author makes every attempt to keep things interesting – including keeping the reader guessing what happened on Janie’s sister’s wedding day that caused Janie to expose her secret in the first place – but this was just a slow read for me. The only character development is of Janie herself, which might be the author’s intention, but I would have liked to learn more about other characters (for example, the other eating-disorder patients). If this is a subject that interests you then you might want to check it out, but keep in mind that Janie goes from sneaking into her room to purge into a sock one week to eating a fudgesicle with no problem the next, and such quick recovery is unlikely.

Prose, F. (2009). Touch. NY: HarperTeen. 262 pages.
Maisie Willard is a freshman in high school who recounts the story of an incident that happened to her on the school bus. She had been friends with the same three boys since they were in preschool, but when Maisie moves away for a year and then moves home after developing “gigantic mega-boobs,” her friends treat her differently. One morning they are sitting in the back of the bus and the three boys touch her breasts. The bulk of the story is working through what actually happened on the bus that day and what Janie remembers happening – did Janie really say no? Did one of the boys hold down her hands so she couldn’t move? Janie also must also deal with the fall-out at school from rumors that start and a lawsuit that her stepmother files. I really enjoyed this book, because it’s messy and realistic. It’s recommended for students in grades 7-9, but I think older readers will like it too.