Looks

George, Madeleine. (2008). Looks. New York: Viking, 240 pp.

Fiction, no awards yet, but George is an award-winning playwright, and with the favorable reviews this book is getting, I would not be surprised to see her add a book award to her resume.

Meghan is "the fat girl" who, paradoxically, is invisible to the entire student body, save the half-dozen basketball demigods who taunt her unmercilessly up and down the halls. Aimee is an anorexic-in-denial who justifies her subsistence on sugar-free jello by claiming an ever-growing number of food allergies. When Aimee ends up alongside Meghan in the nurse's office on the first day of school, Meghan senses that she and Aimee could be the remedy to each other's loneliness. Aimee, meanwhile, becomes friends with sweet, beautiful Cara Roy, model student and founder of the school poetry club. Aimee and Cara bond over their shared love of verse, but Meghan knows something about Cara that Aimee does not, and it is almost too late before Aimee realizes that the one person who can help her is right before her eyes.

There is hardly a topic that concerns 13-16 year-old girls that is not addressed in Looks. Self-esteem, body image, loneliness, false friends, betrayal, gossip, and family issues recur throughout the book, and George deals with these tough topics in an honest, even raw, way. The language and the dialogue is very authentic; the fact that Aimee consistently refers to Meghan as "fat" is not offensive only because the reader believes that she does not do it out of meanness but rather because this is the most readily available word in her vocabulary. Junior high and high school kids are not PC, and George tells it as it is--or as it is for them, at least. The story is also very well-written. It transitions nicely between the two girls' points of view, and the author does an equally good job getting inside both their heads. They are both fairly full characters, and despite their disprivileged positions in the school hierarchy, the reader is rarely tempted to pity them. The only criticism I have deals with the way in which George uses their respective eating disorders to characterize the girls. It was not clear to me exactly what her purpose was in this regard. I do see something valuable in depicting characters who suffer these particular afflictions and showing them as real people rather than over-simplified stereotypes. However, the reasons behind their behaviors are neither clarified nor resolved, and students who see themselves in these characters will be left unsatisfied with the degree to which their body image issues are plumbed.

I would suggest this for individual readers or small groups of female readers. I won't go so far as to say that guys can not relate at all, but the book would be far more successful among the fairer sex. Interestingly, it could also be taught alongside Speak, since the two share similar themes of friendship and betrayal and because Meghan, like Melinda, suffers from a paralyzing inability to speak. It would be very interesting to compare and contrast these two characters.

There are several instances of innapropriate or sexual language, but they're probably not too much for junior high. Meghan and Aimee are 14, and think a couple years either side of 14 is the perfect audience.

This is the book I picked up for my ALAN review, and if I'm being totally honest, I was really initially drawn to the shiny silver and pink jacket. I got lucky, though, because in the end Looks was much better than I hoped or expected. I really enjoyed this book and actually had a hard time putting it down. I was a little disappointed with the ending (for reasons that won't disclose in order not to ruin the plot), but I think the element of non-resolution in the conclusion points to the fact that George is ultimately more concerned with character than plot, and I can appreciate that.