Hunger Point - Softcover

Medoff, Jillian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060989238 ISBN 13: 9780060989231

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2002

Synopsis

"My parents may love me, but I also know they view me as a houseguest who is turning a weekend stay into an all-expense-paid, lifelong residency, and who (to their horror) constantly forgets to flush the toilet and shut off the lights."Twenty-six-year-old Frannie Hunter has just moved back home. Bright, wry, blunt, and irreverent, she invites you to witness her family's unraveling. Her Harvard-bound sister is anorexic, her mother is having an affair, her father is obsessed with the Food Network, her grandfather wants to plan her wedding (even though she has no fiance, let alone a steady boyfriend), and, to top it off, Frannie is a waitress who wears a dirty duck apron and serves plates of fried cheese to her ex-boyfriend's parents. By turns wickedly funny and heartbreakingly bittersweet, Hunger Point chronicles Frannie's triumph over her own self-destructive tendencies, and offers a powerful exploration of the complex relationships that bind together a contemporary American family. You will never forget Frannie, a "sultry, suburban Holden Caulfield," who critics have called "the most fully realized character to come along in years," (Paper) and you'll never forget Hunger Point, an utterly original novel that stuns with its amazing insights and dazzles with its fresh, distinctive voice.

About this title

Review:

"Wonderfully obsessive...bitterly funny."--Vanity Fair

"Memorable...Frannie [is an] appealing character whose story is engaging."--Publishers Weekly

"[Hunger Point] confronts the terrors of anorexia and other modern ills with empathy and understanding."--People

"Recklessly candid."--New York Times

"This fine first novel is so winning and funny, you'll laugh instead of cry."--Mademoiselle

From the Back Cover:

For the women in Frannie Hunter's family, food is sort of a religion. Frannie and her genius younger sister, Shelly, have felt that the sugar high of consuming a box of Girl Scout cookies, the illicit thrill of midnight binges and the triumph of fitting into a pair of size 6 jeans.

All of which seems perfectly normal until Shelly takes dieting a step too far and descends into a nightmare battle with anorexia and bulimia. When Shelly is sent to a psychiatric hospital, Frannie fells confused and angry. She wants to understand and help her sister, but she's already drowning in her own nowhere life. As Frannie struggles to keep her sanity, her wicked sense of humor and her family intact, she gradually begins to discover the awful truth -- that eating isn't the answer, and the only way up is out.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0060989238
• ISBN 13: 9780060989231
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384