WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW
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| “My body is both weapon and wound, predator and prey. I will self-destruct without any help.”- Paperweight, Meg Haston |
Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert.
Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she’s worked so hard to avoid.
Her dad has signed her up for sixty days of treatment. But what no one knows is that Stevie doesn't plan to stay that long. There are only twenty-seven days until the anniversary of her brother Josh’s death—the death she caused. And if Stevie gets her way, there are only twenty-seven days until she too will end her life.
This was an impulse book, only $.99 on Amazon Kindle. I was thinking about reading something along the same lines as The Sky Between You and Me, and this book in particular got good reviews, so thought mind as well. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit more than I thought I would.
I felt both like I hadn't read this story before and I have. The unoriginal aspects were the setting, and the shrink character. The therapist was your basic hippie/free spirit kind of character that doesn't really work for me, and the hospital seemed kind of loose for an eating disorder center. In my head, I was comparing it to JJ Johnson's Believarexic or Sherry Shahan's Skin and Bones, both of which seemed like more of a realistic depiction of being hospitalized with an eating disorder and having your meals planned out for you instead of being allowed to chose whatever you want. I also felt like I had heard the story of whole plot of Stevie blaming herself for her dead brother before- it's a pretty common YA plotline, and the intense borderline-relationship friendship between two girls is also a tired YA trend.
But other than that, a lot about this book was unique. I thought Stevie's reasons for having an eating disorder were different, especially how her mother was responsible for a lot of that. It's rare that YA novels actually blame the mother for anything, it's usually the father that shoulders most of it. And I liked how it showed an abusive female-female relationship/friendship. It's never really clarified as to what Eden meant to her- Stevie treats it more as an intense friendship, and seems more desperate for a friend all her own than an actual romantic relationship and the only way to keep Eden as her friend is to act romantically to her. It even seemed to be a little rape-y (a phrase I hate but works in this context) during a couple of the scenes where Stevie does not want Eden but Eden keeps forcing herself on Stevie, though she doesn't physically or verbally say no.
I found myself also being able to relate to some of Stevie's feelings about loneliness and desperation for a friend. And I did enjoy Stevie's narration and sense of humor- Haston is one of the few authors who has managed to get that kind of dry and sarcastic, observation humor down without it sounded too try-hard. Stevie was a believable character as a whole.
What I mainly liked about Paperweight is that it took a lot of typical YA tropes and turned them on their heads. Like the character of Ashley, or Eden, who we would expect to be the alternative best friend who's supportive and, well, just like someone straight out of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Instead, she's a toxic manipulator who just makes a lot of Stevie's problems worse.
Haston's also an excellent writer. While some of the quotes seemed a bit canned, overall her narrative worked well with the story.
Naturally, though, I do have a few complaints. This novel felt unfinished. I was surprised when it ended, because the ended didn't feel like an ending. I wanted more of a lot of certain aspects, and I felt like Haston didn't develop some parts to the full potential that they could have been. Like Stevie's relationship with her mother. There was so much potential to the subplot- we could have explored how she always favored her son, Stevie's brother, and how she only ever paid attention to Stevie's appearance or gave her disapproving looks whenever she ate something she shouldn't, things like that. Instead, we only got glimmers of that. Which is a shame, because those aspects reminded me of The First Time She Drowned, and I think Haston could have been able to show that mother-daughter relationship so much better than Kletter, who I think was mostly unsuccessful in her portrayal of that particular relationship.
But overall, I did like this book. And I think that Haston mostly did a very good job giving a different perspective on eating disorders, since I find that a lot of those books kind of bleed into each other after a while, so perhaps someone might be able to relate to Stevie's story much more than the usual evil beauty standards, low self esteem, etc stories. I was surprised when I looked to the back and realized that it wasn't based off the author's own experiences, because it felt candid, the way Believarexic felt. Recommended, especially for those who liked Believarexic or even The Memory of Light.
8-8.5 out of 10
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