bibliogramma (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bibliogramma) wrote2018-03-01 11:55 am
bibliogramma) wrote2018-03-01 11:55 am
Sam J. Miller: The Art of Starving
Matt, the protagonist of Sam J. Miller’s YA novel The Art of Starving, is not having a good life. He’s an intelligent, gay high school student who endures daily bullying from the popular jocks. His family is poor, and Jewish. He has suicidal impulses, fantasises about running away, or maybe getting his mother’s mother’s gun and taking it to school, and he struggles with anorexia and body dysphoria, which of course boys supposedly do not get. His sister has run away, and Matt thinks it has something to do with Tariq, one of the boys who torments him. His mother, a single parent who is always exhausted from her work at the slaughterhouse, is in perpetual denial about her children’s problems.
Matt doesn’t acknowledge his anorexia. Instead, he justifies not eating by saying that it makes him more alert and aware of danger, heightens his abilities to defend himself. He practices the Art of Starving, and throughout the book, he formulates the rules that govern his art.
The first person narrative is centred around two main issues. The first is Matt’s perceptions of how his body and senses change when he eats, or doesn’t eat; his belief that starvation heightens awareness, and his war with his body over hunger. The second is his obsession with Tariq, to whom he is attracted, but who he believes has somehow injured his sister so that she had to run away; he doesn’t say it directly, but it’s clear he believes his sister was sexually assaulted by Tariq, and possibly also by Tariq’s bullying friends.
It’s a scorchingly funny, bitterly heartbreaking story. Matt’s pain and desire come alive on every page, couched in trenchant observations about life, wrapped up in the grief of an adolescent who just does not see where he fits in the world. It’s a great novel - but since I’m reading it as a book that’s been heavily recommended as a potential Hugo nominee, I have to ask myself, is it speculative fiction?
The only genre element in the novel is Matt’s belief that he has powers granted to him by the art of starving. Several things happen that may be external validations of his belief. Or they may be delusions. Matt has starved himself to the point where his brain doesn’t work properly, so he is not a reliable narrator.
So... a good novel, an important novel, one that really gives an insider view of what it’s like to be a queer person growing up in a damaged home, struggling with an eating disorder, feeling like an outsider. And yes, I’ve been there. Even to the point of tripping on the sense of power that not eating gives a person who perceives themselves as otherwise powerless. The euphoria of wilful starvation.
But not necessarily a science fiction or fantasy novel. That’s a decision you’ll have to make yourself.
Matt doesn’t acknowledge his anorexia. Instead, he justifies not eating by saying that it makes him more alert and aware of danger, heightens his abilities to defend himself. He practices the Art of Starving, and throughout the book, he formulates the rules that govern his art.
The first person narrative is centred around two main issues. The first is Matt’s perceptions of how his body and senses change when he eats, or doesn’t eat; his belief that starvation heightens awareness, and his war with his body over hunger. The second is his obsession with Tariq, to whom he is attracted, but who he believes has somehow injured his sister so that she had to run away; he doesn’t say it directly, but it’s clear he believes his sister was sexually assaulted by Tariq, and possibly also by Tariq’s bullying friends.
It’s a scorchingly funny, bitterly heartbreaking story. Matt’s pain and desire come alive on every page, couched in trenchant observations about life, wrapped up in the grief of an adolescent who just does not see where he fits in the world. It’s a great novel - but since I’m reading it as a book that’s been heavily recommended as a potential Hugo nominee, I have to ask myself, is it speculative fiction?
The only genre element in the novel is Matt’s belief that he has powers granted to him by the art of starving. Several things happen that may be external validations of his belief. Or they may be delusions. Matt has starved himself to the point where his brain doesn’t work properly, so he is not a reliable narrator.
So... a good novel, an important novel, one that really gives an insider view of what it’s like to be a queer person growing up in a damaged home, struggling with an eating disorder, feeling like an outsider. And yes, I’ve been there. Even to the point of tripping on the sense of power that not eating gives a person who perceives themselves as otherwise powerless. The euphoria of wilful starvation.
But not necessarily a science fiction or fantasy novel. That’s a decision you’ll have to make yourself.