What do you think?
Rate this book
Skin and Bones
Sherry Shahan's SKIN AND BONES, pitched as ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST meets LOVE STORY set in an eating disorder hospital in which an aspiring ballerina and a quirky nerdboy fall desperately in love only to become each other's next deadly addiction, to Wendy McClure at Albert Whitman
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2014
71 people are currently reading
1196 people want to read
About the author
Sherry Shahan
49 books15 followersSherry Shahan is a photographer and an author. She enjoys watching, photographing, and writing about the otters that play in the sea near her home in California. Sherry also wrote and photographed The Changing Caterpillar for Richard C. Owen Publishers.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 181 reviews
April 20, 2014
Eating Disorders are something that I know a lot about because they have impacted my life in such a harsh way. So I expected to be able to relate to Jack's story yet I couldn't at all. It all felt very flimsy and rushed, nothing is properly explained and the characters are so choppy with the ever-present insta-love. Nonetheless, I liked the ending solely because it's not necessarily a typical one.
Skin and Bones biggest problem has to be how unrealistic it is. The ICU unit in this is really relaxed and don't seem to care about anything until Jack's first weigh in. He exercises and no one's there to watch him like a hawk his first few days there. This is actually mandatory pretty much everywhere no matter what is wrong with a person, there should always be a nurse watching especially on the first few days to get them to stop their horrible habits.Like I mentioned before, the characters are a bit flimsy and barely have a back story except for their parents. Jack doesn't seem like an actual boy either. He's like a girl trying to be a boy because of how emotional and stuff he gets. It's very hard for a female writing to create a realistic male voice and Shahan didn't capture it at all. Another thing that I didn't like is the romance between Alice and Jack because it's too forced and odd especially at first. It never really progresses and just suddenly ends just as the foundation was sloppily being built.
The story is fairly short and the chapters are short so it's an easy read. The ending isn't typical and I wasn't expecting that which is why I'm bumping this book up to two stars.
Although Skin and Bones isn't an original story and it felt more like a pamphlet rather than a story that could happen to anyone, it's an easy enough read that some people, who might have to try pretty hard will enjoy. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys these kinds of novels but beware, it isn't something new.
September 16, 2016
So I will state upfront, I have some knowledge of eating disorders but I am no means an expert. However, at the same time I feel like I have a pretty good amount of knowledge to realize what is wrong with this book.
Going in, I was excited about the concept. A male anorexic in an in-patient ward of a hospital. I was excited to see how it would be portrayed and whatnot.
And then I started reading...
This book suffers from many a things that makes me want to chuck it across the room.
There are two many points and I will just talk about them quickly because I want to get away from this book.
1. The psychology is crap-Apparently only Freudian psych exists. For an eating disorder unit, YOU DON'T TELL THEM THEIR WEIGHT OR CALORIES. That's the worst you can do. Also, these kids had easy access to food despite the fact that some of them binge eat. And they can exercise without being supervised. *laughs* I know people that have worked on these units. NOPE. It is not that relaxed. The psychologist was dumb and made stupid decisions in group therapy. No. You DO NOT "force" patients to explain their problems in a group setting with their parents and the parents of the other patients. WHAT. Also, anorexics are distorted about themselves but, like normal people, can judge the weight and stuff of others without problem. What Bones was saying made me raise an eyebrow.
2. The story is about a guy and a girl with the girl being the crazy "unique" one that helps the main character solve his issues. This trope is super overdone and when Alice appeared I had to roll my eyes. I thought it would get better but it has not. If you've read ANY story with the dying girl trope....well it's in full effect here.
I didn't even finish this book because it annoyed me so much. Barrelling through the last 50 pages is not worth it at all.
If you want to read a good book about anorexia, read Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson.
March 21, 2015
Skin and Bones is a story very rarely told, an anorexic who uses exercise, and doesn't really purge by throwing up. It also tells the story of a boy who is suffering from Anorexia, a rare find in stories dealing with eating disorders. Now, despite the heavy, sometimes difficult to talk about subject matter of the book it was a fast read. The issues were addressed in a manner that was appropriate for a teenager but was not too simple to be insulting. In my opinion, the best part of this book was the relationships. We have Bones(Jack) who is the main protagonist, and then we have Lard who almost seems to be a comic relief, but has a very important role in helping Bones sort of come back to himself at times in the book. Then we have Alice, who is a very difficult character, but such a great portrayal of some girls with anorexia. Alice tends to be manipulative, tricky, and is also enabling to the disorder, and Bones is attracted to this and learns from her. Lard can see Bones falling for her tricks and tries to warn him, but also ends up trapped in her grip. Sadly, Alice is the character that does not change for the better. Bones and Lard both show a lot of growth. The way their relationships play out, specifically Alice and Bones, is extremely accurate. Another thing I love about this book is that it does not give you tips, tricks, etc about how to binge and purge, etc. It gives you facts, but it never has a tone of encouragement and that is something I appreciate.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in eating disorders, someone whose sibling is struggling with the disorder, or even someone recovering or dealing with the disorder.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in eating disorders, someone whose sibling is struggling with the disorder, or even someone recovering or dealing with the disorder.
April 4, 2015
Grade: F
Jack, AKA Bones, checks into apparently the worst eating disorders unit on the planet during his summer vacation to fast track his recovery from anorexia. He rooms with the only other make on the unit, Lard. He falls in love with the nearly dead ballerina Alice, who is allowed to dance in her room between heart attacks. Aside from allowing body shaming nicknames like Bones and Lard on the unit, which is run by one doctor and nurse who must work 24 hrs a day, the patients grow pot on the roof. They seem to have only one hour of group therapy s day, and no individual therapy and occasional family therapy nights in which parents are allowed to publicly shame their children.
Aside from having a rare male protagonist with anorexia, Sherry Shahan has created one hot mess of a story with SKIN AND BONES. The writing, told mostly from Bones's third person POV (with many slips) has far more tell than show. While the cast of characters is sometimes engaging and some have interesting, albeit stereotypical, backgrounds, even Jack isn't particularly compelling. SKIN AND BONES has the obligatory Big Negative Event to make the protagonist get serious about recovery. The story ends with a whimper.
I'm honestly surprised this book was ever published and assume it would never have been if not for a male main character. If the story had been poorly constructed and compelling, or well written and poorly researched, had strong characters or was strong in any way, I'd recommend, but I just can't give a reason to read SKIN AND BONES, unless you are a male suffering from anorexia and you want something to possibly relate to.
Themes: eating disorders, mental health, inpatient treatment (that doesn't reflect any quality of treatment)
Jack, AKA Bones, checks into apparently the worst eating disorders unit on the planet during his summer vacation to fast track his recovery from anorexia. He rooms with the only other make on the unit, Lard. He falls in love with the nearly dead ballerina Alice, who is allowed to dance in her room between heart attacks. Aside from allowing body shaming nicknames like Bones and Lard on the unit, which is run by one doctor and nurse who must work 24 hrs a day, the patients grow pot on the roof. They seem to have only one hour of group therapy s day, and no individual therapy and occasional family therapy nights in which parents are allowed to publicly shame their children.
Aside from having a rare male protagonist with anorexia, Sherry Shahan has created one hot mess of a story with SKIN AND BONES. The writing, told mostly from Bones's third person POV (with many slips) has far more tell than show. While the cast of characters is sometimes engaging and some have interesting, albeit stereotypical, backgrounds, even Jack isn't particularly compelling. SKIN AND BONES has the obligatory Big Negative Event to make the protagonist get serious about recovery. The story ends with a whimper.
I'm honestly surprised this book was ever published and assume it would never have been if not for a male main character. If the story had been poorly constructed and compelling, or well written and poorly researched, had strong characters or was strong in any way, I'd recommend, but I just can't give a reason to read SKIN AND BONES, unless you are a male suffering from anorexia and you want something to possibly relate to.
Themes: eating disorders, mental health, inpatient treatment (that doesn't reflect any quality of treatment)
January 27, 2015
Jack is in a program for people with eating disorders because his parents want him to be there. He knows the truth: his thin frame looks good and he could even stand to lose a few pounds. Jack has been obsessed about his weight ever since middle school when a store clerk assessed his size and handed him a pair of “husky” jeans. He doesn’t think he needs to change.
As he gets to know the other members in his six-week, live-in program he sees people who are just as obsessed with food as he is, some with eating it, some with not eating it. He’s attracted to Alice, a young, anorexic ballerina who has been in and out of treatment several times. As Jack sees the things Alice does to lose weight, he starts to reassess his own point of view. He and others in the program experience group sessions, family meetings, and individual therapy, but it isn’t until one of their own suffers a crisis that the true meaning of what they’re dealing with becomes evident.
Skin and Bones by Sherry Shahan looks at the nature of eating disorders and how they can affect the lives and threaten the health of teens and young adults. With Jack, nicknamed Bones in the program, and his roommate Lard, an overeater, Shahan shows that girls aren’t the only ones who get eating disorders. She also really gets the voice of a teen struggling with issues around food. Jack believes he is healthy. He will do anything to burn off the extra calories he’s required to consume each day. Readers get to see why he thinks the way he does and why it’s so difficult to change that thinking.
Skin and Bones is a great way for moms and daughters in book clubs to approach a difficult topic and discuss it. What is the danger of eating disorders? Why can’t those who have them see their actions are hurting them? How do you react to someone you care about who has one? There are also facts about eating disorders and a list of resources in the back of the book. I recommend Skin and Bones for groups with girls aged 14 and up.
The publisher gave me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
As he gets to know the other members in his six-week, live-in program he sees people who are just as obsessed with food as he is, some with eating it, some with not eating it. He’s attracted to Alice, a young, anorexic ballerina who has been in and out of treatment several times. As Jack sees the things Alice does to lose weight, he starts to reassess his own point of view. He and others in the program experience group sessions, family meetings, and individual therapy, but it isn’t until one of their own suffers a crisis that the true meaning of what they’re dealing with becomes evident.
Skin and Bones by Sherry Shahan looks at the nature of eating disorders and how they can affect the lives and threaten the health of teens and young adults. With Jack, nicknamed Bones in the program, and his roommate Lard, an overeater, Shahan shows that girls aren’t the only ones who get eating disorders. She also really gets the voice of a teen struggling with issues around food. Jack believes he is healthy. He will do anything to burn off the extra calories he’s required to consume each day. Readers get to see why he thinks the way he does and why it’s so difficult to change that thinking.
Skin and Bones is a great way for moms and daughters in book clubs to approach a difficult topic and discuss it. What is the danger of eating disorders? Why can’t those who have them see their actions are hurting them? How do you react to someone you care about who has one? There are also facts about eating disorders and a list of resources in the back of the book. I recommend Skin and Bones for groups with girls aged 14 and up.
The publisher gave me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
May 4, 2015
“Bones” is an in-patient facility for those suffering from eating disorders, sent by his family in the hopes that this time he will be able to “cure” his anorexia. While in treatment, he meets Alice, a ballerina who spends as much time in the ICU as out of it, due to her use of laxatives, diuretics and tricks to outwit the hospital’s doctors. Bones thinks she’s perfect.
Does it make me a terrible person if I hated this book? Because I did. I hated it. I want to feel bad for these characters, because eating disorders cause massive and real suffering, but this particular portrayal of this disease... well, I hated it. I am. I’m a terrible person.
Bones is his obsessions. First food and then Alice. He doesn’t do anything, like anything, think anything or feel anything outside of those two things... there is nothing to latch on to as a character besides his worry and compulsions about calories, exercise and this really unlikeable girl. At the end of the book, when he was on the road to normalizing his view on both these things, I almost felt bad for him because what else does he have?
The hospital setting also feels completely unrealistic to me. Even though I’ve never been in a treatment center for eating disorders before, I can’t imagine that the patients in one are allowed to walk around freely, exercise for hours at a time, sneak out to drink and do drugs and lets patients engage in harmful and body shaming behavior towards one another. It’s as if Shahan wanted to make a point about the dangers of this disease, but couldn’t be bothered to bring in any realism at all. All her creativity seemed to be expended on the daring act of creating a MALE anorexic main character, then she dusted off her hands and called it a day.
Does it make me a terrible person if I hated this book? Because I did. I hated it. I want to feel bad for these characters, because eating disorders cause massive and real suffering, but this particular portrayal of this disease... well, I hated it. I am. I’m a terrible person.
Bones is his obsessions. First food and then Alice. He doesn’t do anything, like anything, think anything or feel anything outside of those two things... there is nothing to latch on to as a character besides his worry and compulsions about calories, exercise and this really unlikeable girl. At the end of the book, when he was on the road to normalizing his view on both these things, I almost felt bad for him because what else does he have?
The hospital setting also feels completely unrealistic to me. Even though I’ve never been in a treatment center for eating disorders before, I can’t imagine that the patients in one are allowed to walk around freely, exercise for hours at a time, sneak out to drink and do drugs and lets patients engage in harmful and body shaming behavior towards one another. It’s as if Shahan wanted to make a point about the dangers of this disease, but couldn’t be bothered to bring in any realism at all. All her creativity seemed to be expended on the daring act of creating a MALE anorexic main character, then she dusted off her hands and called it a day.
February 14, 2014
3.5
I wanted to read Skin and Bones because I am drawn to books about teens with issues, especially eating disorders. It impacted my family and reading about it is therapeutic for me. I also haven't read many books from the male perspective of eating disorders and was drawn to that unique element.
While there are differences in how men and women see their bodies, the disease has a lot of overlap in effecting them. There have been events that really made Jack insecure about his body and it started as something that he could control. Unlike in his group, his family is intact and mostly put together, but it is really how he saw himself that was at the root of his problems.
Jack is placed with an overeater nick-named Lard, and at first, Jack thought that they couldn't be any more different. But as they room together, talk and go to group together, they find more in common than they thought and become friends and begin to help each other.
It is so important what they realize and are told it is one moment, one choice at a time that will make a change. Everyone wants overnight cures but it isn't that easy.
I had a feeling I knew where everything was going with Bones and Alice. Bones, of course, I was glad he would see the light and get a better understanding of what healthy is and transform his body image, but I was so afraid of him only getting it after a tragedy with Alice.
I am appreciative that the story didn't end with a completely cured Bones, but one that wanted to change, and was willing to put in the work.
Bottom Line: Good contemp about a teen guy with an eating disorder.
I wanted to read Skin and Bones because I am drawn to books about teens with issues, especially eating disorders. It impacted my family and reading about it is therapeutic for me. I also haven't read many books from the male perspective of eating disorders and was drawn to that unique element.
While there are differences in how men and women see their bodies, the disease has a lot of overlap in effecting them. There have been events that really made Jack insecure about his body and it started as something that he could control. Unlike in his group, his family is intact and mostly put together, but it is really how he saw himself that was at the root of his problems.
Jack is placed with an overeater nick-named Lard, and at first, Jack thought that they couldn't be any more different. But as they room together, talk and go to group together, they find more in common than they thought and become friends and begin to help each other.
It is so important what they realize and are told it is one moment, one choice at a time that will make a change. Everyone wants overnight cures but it isn't that easy.
I had a feeling I knew where everything was going with Bones and Alice. Bones, of course, I was glad he would see the light and get a better understanding of what healthy is and transform his body image, but I was so afraid of him only getting it after a tragedy with Alice.
I am appreciative that the story didn't end with a completely cured Bones, but one that wanted to change, and was willing to put in the work.
Bottom Line: Good contemp about a teen guy with an eating disorder.
October 20, 2013
Shahan’s book focuses on teenage eating disorders, but earns it’s distinction in that the main character struggling with anorexia, is male- Jack (aka: Bones). His “sidekick” throughout the book is a boy on the opposite end of the eating spectrum, who has nicknamed himself Lard, as he says it is better to give yourself the nickname then let others dictate it. So often, young adult fiction that zeros in on the world of eating disorders focuses only on the anorexia/bulimia side of that world and within those boundaries, looks primarily at female sufferers. The fact that the two main characters are male is this book’s saving grace.
That is where my love of this book ends. There are just too many gaps in the storyline and too often I felt like I was missing a page of the book. For example, early in the book, just after Jack checks in to the eating disorder unit (EDU) at his local hospital, he attends a group therapy session, where everyone is given a writing assignment. After the session, he is invited to spend time with some of the other patients, but says he wants to go to his room to write. The next thing we know, he falls asleep and it is suddenly morning. The flow of the timeline is just off. As I read this section, I felt like I had skipped a page somehow. I even checked and rechecked the page numbers on my e-reader to make sure I hadn’t flipped too many at once. But no. There was no in between action.
Read the rest of this review (and more!) at www.insearchoftheendofthesidewalk.com
That is where my love of this book ends. There are just too many gaps in the storyline and too often I felt like I was missing a page of the book. For example, early in the book, just after Jack checks in to the eating disorder unit (EDU) at his local hospital, he attends a group therapy session, where everyone is given a writing assignment. After the session, he is invited to spend time with some of the other patients, but says he wants to go to his room to write. The next thing we know, he falls asleep and it is suddenly morning. The flow of the timeline is just off. As I read this section, I felt like I had skipped a page somehow. I even checked and rechecked the page numbers on my e-reader to make sure I hadn’t flipped too many at once. But no. There was no in between action.
Read the rest of this review (and more!) at www.insearchoftheendofthesidewalk.com
February 3, 2015
The book was written well enough but to be completely honest, a lot of the events and characters annoyed me. A few of the events in the book seemed a little over dramatic and over-exaggerated. Jack was an ok character to follow and his love for Alice was sweet but to me, it seemed as if he fell in love with her way too fast. Lard was probably my favorite character, his comments were funny and I just love his personality. His relationship with Teresa was again, sweet but I really dislike how all the kids with eating disorders become best friends and they all fall in love with each other. I understand that sometimes you do become close with people who are fighting the same battles as you but I wish that there was at least one significant character that was different from them, someone else in another wing of the hospital who they were friends with. Overall, a good book that does in fact respect eating disorders but it isn't the best book out there on the topic.
October 27, 2013
I really liked this book. and I know that there are some bad reviews of it floating around, but dont listen to them until you read it for yourself. honestly, I was expecting a sappy boring book about a kid with anorexia, but this book was awesome. not once while reading it did I think, man this is boring. it Sucked me in from the very beginning. definitely check it out if you can. I got my copy from netgalley.com. (:
March 21, 2019
Sherry Shahan wrote a short story about two people that meet in eating disorder treatment called “Iris and Jim.” It is the LITERAL romanization of having Anorexia Nervosa.
In “Skin and Bones”, she tries to go deeper. Iris is Alice. Jim was changed to “Jack”, but begins to go by Bones.
Depictions of Eating Disorders and Treatment Programs
I understand you have to suspend your disbelief a bit when it comes to any form of fiction. But Sherry Shahan really stretches it. It’s difficult to write a thrilling romance when the characters are under lock and key and constantly under medical supervision. So the book does away with most of it. The patients freely roam to other parts of the hospital, into each other’s rooms during the night, and on top of the hospital roof. If this was a real eating disorder program, it would be shut down. From interviews I have read, Sherry Shahan has not disclosed any personal history with an eating disorder. So what she knows about them and their treatment, likely comes from research.
The only staff mentioned in the book are Dr. Chu, Nurse Nancy, the orderly named Bruno who is refereed to as “Unibrow”, and Gumbo, the hospital chef. Bones “reluctantly agreed” to come to the hospital, because it wasn’t a “lock down facility.” Later, when the protagonist, Bones, expressed surprise that his roommate was allowed to tend to a vegetable garden on the roof, Lard replies, “I’d never be in one of those programs with locked doors and alarms. A guy can’t go outside to fart if he has to.” It’s established early on that the security is minimal. But that is hardly an excuse for all of the shenanigans the patients get away with.
Sherry Shahan seems to understand Anorexia well. But the book describes characters like Lard as “compulsive overeaters”, rather than using the DSM-5 diagnosis of Binge Eating Disorder. (This book was published after the DSM-5 came out.) It is established early on that this is Lard’s second time in the program. The previous summer, he came to the program after being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Lard states that he lost 100 pounds, and it’s implied that this was done over his summer vacation. Let’s ignore Health at Every Size for a moment. Even if it was important for Lard to lose that much weight, I cannot imagine any healthy scenario where a teenager could lose 100 pounds, that quickly, without some serious health implications. If it won’t trigger you, I encourage doing some research on former Biggest Loser Contestants. It’s never mentioned if Lard gained weight back, or how much. He has returned to the program for one month of the summer. He calls it a “refresher course”. This is in it’s self is realistic. The hospital I’ve gone to to really likes to use the term “tune up.” But it’s never made clear what Lard needs a refresher on.
This is a controversial opinion, but Type 2 Diabetes can be managed from a Health at Every Size perspective. And it is necessary to take a HAES approach when treating a person with any history of a clinical eating disorder, or a history of chronic dieting and/or weight cycling. Health at Every Size does not mean becoming complacent about your health. One can to learn to monitor their blood sugar and eat according to their medical needs, without focusing on intentional weight loss. Lard does not appear to come from a background of dieting or restricting, so he may do alright in weight-based interventions. But this is not a commonality among people with eating disorders. And the fact that he’s receiving this type of intervention in an eating disorder clinic is disconcerting.
I am sure she the author had the best of intentions. But the result is a book, written for teenagers, about the dangers of Anorexia Nervosa, that also promotes extreme weight loss in people with Binge Eating Disorder.
I give this book a few points for outright addressing that a significant portion of people with bulimia don’t lose weight. But they do it in one of the least subtle ways possible.
When Bones goes to his first weigh in, he stops to talk to Teresa, a character described as both fat and having Bulimia. She joyously shares with him she has lost another 7 pounds. Teresa remarks that the sores in her mouth have healed since she arrived at the hospital, and that she had no idea she could ever lose weight while eating “normally.” It is true that following a hospital meal plan, or beginning intuitive eating in later stages of recovery, MAY results in significant weight loss. But it’s never guaranteed, and it should never be the goal of eating disorder treatment. Prescribing someone with Bulimia weight loss is like prescribing alcohol or illicit drugs to treat addiction. Skin and Bones is yet another book that comes so close to understanding eating disorder treatment, but then falls short. Yes, people in larger bodies have eating disorders. Yes, many people with Bulimia are not thin. But intentional weight loss should never be encouraged in treatment! I wish this exchange focused on how abstaining from purging and following a meal plan made Teresa feel.
Informed competent treatment programs put eating disorder patients on weight maintenance or weight gain plans. Eating disorder programs with weight loss programs have a reputation for placing people in larger bodies into weight loss programs, and enabling their behaviors further. I have heard so many horror stories.
People with eating disorders often lack self awareness. A fat patient with Atypical Anorexia and an underweight patient with Anorexia Nervosa may both under eat without realizing it. Since weight bias is so ingrained in our culture, even professionals are guilty of stereotyping patients and making assumptions based on appearance. Both patients in this example eat significantly under their calorie needs. Both clients may report to their clinicians that they feel they are eating too much. Sadly, clinicians are more likely to challenge the cognitive distortions of the underweight client, but assume the larger client is in fact, overeating. The underweight client will be nudged in the direction of recovery. The client in a larger body will be encouraged to control their portions. But both interventions will be framed as “treatment”. In clients that binge eat, encouraging restriction further perpetuates the restrict-binge and restrict-binge-purge cycle. One simple solution for preventing problems such as these in eating disorder treatment is to reform or shut down all eating disorder programs that have weight loss components. While this model may not harm every patient, there will always be casualties. This is one thing I will never budge on. (To learn more about the harm that weight loss based interventions do in eating disorder treatment, I strongly encourage this episode of The Food Psych Podcast: #178: The Truth About High-Weight Anorexia with Erin Harrop.)
While different eating disorders are depicted in Skin and Bones, only low weight Anorexics ever appear to be in mortal danger. I also don’t believe this book has any characters with Atypical Anorexia. The Anorexics are thin. The Bulimics and Binge Eaters are fat. There aren’t any significant “in between” type characters.
Quote from book:
“He tried to match name tags with body types: Elizabeth (cute and chubby- probably a recovering bulimic), Daphne (ditto), Cynthia (obviously ex-anorexic), Christy (impossible to tell), Phil (definitely a snacks-in-front-of-the-tv-over-eater.)”
Sherry Shahan is sincerely trying to show that people with eating disorders come in all sizes. But she is still perpetuating the myth that you can tell how a person eats by their body type. Bones could easily be wrong about every single diagnosis listed in this passage.
The major selling point for this novel is its male protagonist with an eating. Even if you don’t find “Skin and Bones” to be particularly compelling, THANK GOD it’s something new in the world of YA eating disorder books.
Potential Triggers
The body shaming in this book is excessive. Shahan immediately introduces sympathetic fat characters. But since the protagonist has Anorexia, they are seen through the lens of a fatphobic person. There is a gradual shift throughout the book in Bones perception of the fat people he people he meets in treatment. It serves a narrative purpose. But this is a trope I wish these types of books would move away from.
When Jack “Bones” is brought to his room, he finds that it’s filled with cookbooks, cooking magazines, and recipes mounted to a bulletin board. He is appalled that he’s going to be “stuck with a roommate who was obsessed with eating.” In his first appearance, “Lard” is described as “a short, squat guy with a slightly dangerous body mass…He even looked like a food addict.” Bones’ disgust of fat patients on the unit, such as his roommate Lard, and Teresa, a girl with Bulimia, is pretty apparent in the beginning of the book. There are still parts of this story that feel like elongated fat jokes. Such as when the narration states that Jack can hear Lard saying the words, “Little Debbies” in his sleep. (I’m calling BS.) Teresa, who is fat herself, makes jokes at the expense of fat people on television. In a game of truth or dare, Teresa actually confronts Jack about how he treats her. Later on, Jack apologizes for treating her poorly when they first met.
The book lists calories to provide insight into the mind of a person with an eating disorder. Low body weights of characters with Anorexia are frequently mentioned. With Bones and Alice, it does appear to be tracking their treatment progress. But later in the book, we meet a character named Julia who talks about a dangerously low weight she reached at a near death experience. Shahan could have gotten the point across without attaching a shocking number.
Twice, this book confronts the issue of sexual abuse. Teresa reveals in a group session that she was molested as a child by her neighbor, but her family forbids her from speaking about it. On Family Day, when all of the patients have relatives attend group with them, Dr. Chu encourages Teresa to address it out in the open.
Confronting the issue in this way goes against what I learned both in graduate school for mental health counseling, and in my own treatment experiences. When I was in eating disorder treatment, we were told not to discuss the specific details of our trauma in group settings to avoid triggering other members. (This was primarily the case for sexual and physical abuse.) So doing this in front of other patients, AND their families, is unthinkable to me.
The family therapy scene as a whole is a mess, because it paints Dr. Chu as totally incompetent. I know through Jack’s eyes, Dr. Chu is a dorky adult, who wears silly ties and spills food on himself. And this may not be an accurate representation, playing into the trope of The Unreliable Narrator. But forcing an adolescent, survivor of sexual abuse to disclose her history to a room full of strangers is incredibly irresponsible. Dangerous, even.
I know people with eating disorders go to extreme measures. But Shahan seems oddly fixated on laxative abuse. Another title for this novel could be “100 Uses and Abuses for Chocolate Laxatives.” We hear about people baking them in brownies, melting them onto magazine pages and licking them off. In “Iris and Jim”, they say Iris was hospitalized consuming a carton of them after fasting. When Jim goes to visit Iris in the ICU, he is consuming laxatives as she goes into cardiac arrest. Both events are fortunately omitted from “Skin and Bones.”
But the most egregious example plays into Alice’s escape. During their unauthorized outing, Alice had purchased laxatives at a drug store, melted them on the heat vent, and painted them onto the pages of a magazine with a makeup brush, so she could sneak him into the hospital. After Dr. Chu informs the boys Alice is missing, Bones searches her room and finds the pages of her magazine have been licked clean and tossed in the trash.This is perhaps what I understand least about the novel. Alice orchestrates this outing as a rouse to escape the hospital. But before running out, carrying everything she brought into the hospital with her, she consumes laxatives. Wouldn’t this slow her down, for her obvious reasons?
Since the book is from the point of view of a hormonal teenaged boy, he fantasizes a lot. There is discussion of erections and masturbation. And one canon sex scene. Bones often sexualizes Alice and her emaciated body outside the context of sexual activity. (The most cringy example is probably a passage where Bones talks about wanting to play Alice’s rib cage like xylophone.) Alice often flirts back, because doing so makes it easier to manipulate Bones into doing her favors.
Lard
Please allow me to talk about my favorite character in Skin and Bones. David Kowlesky insists upon being called “Lard.” And while I’m not crazy about the nickname, it’s similar to Rebel Wilson’s character in Pitch Perfect, who simply goes by “Fat Amy.”
Lard explains, “I learned a long time ago that if you’re fat and don’t give yourself a nickname, someone else will.” Jack’s nickname, “Bones” doesn’t serve a narrative purpose. I don’t care for it. I don’t care for the title of the book Lard and Bones, and someone they meet later in an outpatient support group who used to go by “Rake’, are the only patients with nicknames. Bones repeatedly refers to the orderly, Bruno, as “Unibrow.”
In a lot of ways, Lard is the stereotypical, cartoon caricature of a “fat kid.” He has dorky glasses. He hides twinkies in a Toy Story lunchbox. He eats “Cheese Doodles”, and drives a car that resembles one so closely he calls it the “The Doodle.” I wish Shahan was more original and relied less on stereotypes, but Lard also kind of pulls it off.
We don’t know a great deal about Lard’s recovery process. But he has apparently found solace in the culinary arts. “I’m a compulsive eater. I’ve always sneaked food, kept secret stashes, gorged when no one was around. Now I have a reason to be around food- a reason that makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.” He also works in the hospital kitchen during his stay, and is close friends with Chef Gumbo. This is another convenient plot device that allows for some of the aforementioned shenanigans.
Lard and Bones are meant to be opposites, in more ways than just their size. They play off each other well, and I enjoy their banter.
Lard plays the straight man to Bones. He challenges Bones irrational thinking, often in humorous ways. He expresses on multiple occasions his desire for other patients to leave the program without looking back. He knows if they don’t return, it means they are finally embracing recovery. He has a fundamental understanding of what it takes to get well, and why others struggle to do so. “There’s no magic pill for what we have…especially if you don’t admit there’s a problem.”
Lard is also willing to call both Bones and Alice out on their crap. My favorite Lard quote is probably, “Trying to appear tragic in an eating disorder ward is redundant.”
The Love Story
Bones is smitten with Alice the moment they meet. Although Karen Carpenter isn’t named until later, The Carpenter’s hit, “We’ve Only Just Begun” is literally playing on the radio when they formally meet. Alice begins to flirt back, asking Bones for favors. Alice takes advantage of Bones’ feeling for her, and his reluctance to recover. Bones mistakes his infatuation with Alice for love, and their shared illnesses as a form of intimacy. He sneaks out of his room at night, and into hers, to move furniture for her, film her dace practices, and at times massage her feet and back. (For some reason, Dr. Chu permits Alice to a video camera in the hospital.) One night in particular, Alice practices outside of the hospital gift shop rather than in her room. This is another one of those parts where it’s difficult to suspend my disbelief. While the book mentions them having to sneak around the night staff, psychiatric hospitals typically check on their patients every 30-60 minutes. On a mixed gender unit, especially for teenagers, staff would go to great lengths to keep boys and girls out of each other’s rooms. (I’ve heard a lot of consensual gay inpatient hookups, but staff are probably wising up to that too.) In a competent hospital, there is no way Alice and Bones wouldn’t be caught in each other’s rooms, at some point. While this is an eating disorder unit in a general hospital, rather than an eating disorder unit in a psychiatric hospital, people in inpatient programs are typically locked in and cannot leave the unit without staff. While this program doesn’t appear to be for patients who are suicidal, or experiencing hallucinations, delusions, or mania, it’s unthinkable that patients are able to access the roof and other parts of the hospital so easily.
Shit hits the fan when Alice finds blank menu cards she stowed on the unit during her previous hospital stay. She fills them in with low calorie foods. She asks Lard to substitute it with the one staff filled out for her, so she can eat a low calorie meal. He refuses, so she persuades Bones to do it instead. Since this a terrible hospital, with no dietitians, and meal supervision is rare, no one notices Alice is served vegetable broth, jello, and a cracker for a meal. Later that same day, she goes into cardiac arrest. Bones is able to run straight off the unlocked unit and follower her tothe ICU.
When he returns to the unit, one of the nurses is telling the other patients about Karen Carpenter’s death. Overhearing this exchange is what leads Bones to understand the severity of Alice’s illness.
Bones, while not fully committed to his own recovery yet, refuses to continue enabling Alice. She shows Bones affection when he helps her use behaviors, and withholds it when he won’t submit to her demands. Her final act is persuading Lard and Bones to help her escape the hospital, without them even realizing that’s what they were doing. Lard, for some reason, is allowed to have his car keys in the hospital. (Most programs lock those things up, unless you’re going out on a pass.) The three teenagers are able to leave the hospital, crash a hotel happy hour, and return. Their escape does not go unnoticed. But for whatever reason, Dr. Chu chose neither to inform their parents or the police of their disappearance.When they return to the hospital, Bones and Alice split apart from Lard, and end up alone in an elevator. Alice kisses Bones and gratifies him sexually. Bones believes this is a consumption of their relationship, but in reality, she is distracting him so she can escape. They split up, and Jack returns to the hospital in a daze. When Alice doesn’t turn up, Bones and Lard assume she got caught by staff. Early the next morning, Dr. Chu wakes Lard and Bones for questioning. He informs them that he was aware they left hospital grounds, but that Alice had returned, only to claim her belongings.
At the story’s conclusion, Bones hopes that Alice will come out of her coma and choose recovery. I honestly don’t know if it makes the book better or worse that it ends uncertainly. Rather than confirming whether Alice lives or dies, she is left in a coma. Would her death give the story more weight? Shahan may have intentionally done this so readers can choose their own ending. I know there are young readers out there that prefer to believe Alice lives, and that she and Bones get together again down the road. But even if Alice lived, Bones deserves better. He deserves a relationship that isn’t built on manipulation, deceit, and sickness.
Read more: https://bitemeblogs.wordpress.com/201...
In “Skin and Bones”, she tries to go deeper. Iris is Alice. Jim was changed to “Jack”, but begins to go by Bones.
Depictions of Eating Disorders and Treatment Programs
I understand you have to suspend your disbelief a bit when it comes to any form of fiction. But Sherry Shahan really stretches it. It’s difficult to write a thrilling romance when the characters are under lock and key and constantly under medical supervision. So the book does away with most of it. The patients freely roam to other parts of the hospital, into each other’s rooms during the night, and on top of the hospital roof. If this was a real eating disorder program, it would be shut down. From interviews I have read, Sherry Shahan has not disclosed any personal history with an eating disorder. So what she knows about them and their treatment, likely comes from research.
The only staff mentioned in the book are Dr. Chu, Nurse Nancy, the orderly named Bruno who is refereed to as “Unibrow”, and Gumbo, the hospital chef. Bones “reluctantly agreed” to come to the hospital, because it wasn’t a “lock down facility.” Later, when the protagonist, Bones, expressed surprise that his roommate was allowed to tend to a vegetable garden on the roof, Lard replies, “I’d never be in one of those programs with locked doors and alarms. A guy can’t go outside to fart if he has to.” It’s established early on that the security is minimal. But that is hardly an excuse for all of the shenanigans the patients get away with.
Sherry Shahan seems to understand Anorexia well. But the book describes characters like Lard as “compulsive overeaters”, rather than using the DSM-5 diagnosis of Binge Eating Disorder. (This book was published after the DSM-5 came out.) It is established early on that this is Lard’s second time in the program. The previous summer, he came to the program after being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Lard states that he lost 100 pounds, and it’s implied that this was done over his summer vacation. Let’s ignore Health at Every Size for a moment. Even if it was important for Lard to lose that much weight, I cannot imagine any healthy scenario where a teenager could lose 100 pounds, that quickly, without some serious health implications. If it won’t trigger you, I encourage doing some research on former Biggest Loser Contestants. It’s never mentioned if Lard gained weight back, or how much. He has returned to the program for one month of the summer. He calls it a “refresher course”. This is in it’s self is realistic. The hospital I’ve gone to to really likes to use the term “tune up.” But it’s never made clear what Lard needs a refresher on.
This is a controversial opinion, but Type 2 Diabetes can be managed from a Health at Every Size perspective. And it is necessary to take a HAES approach when treating a person with any history of a clinical eating disorder, or a history of chronic dieting and/or weight cycling. Health at Every Size does not mean becoming complacent about your health. One can to learn to monitor their blood sugar and eat according to their medical needs, without focusing on intentional weight loss. Lard does not appear to come from a background of dieting or restricting, so he may do alright in weight-based interventions. But this is not a commonality among people with eating disorders. And the fact that he’s receiving this type of intervention in an eating disorder clinic is disconcerting.
I am sure she the author had the best of intentions. But the result is a book, written for teenagers, about the dangers of Anorexia Nervosa, that also promotes extreme weight loss in people with Binge Eating Disorder.
I give this book a few points for outright addressing that a significant portion of people with bulimia don’t lose weight. But they do it in one of the least subtle ways possible.
When Bones goes to his first weigh in, he stops to talk to Teresa, a character described as both fat and having Bulimia. She joyously shares with him she has lost another 7 pounds. Teresa remarks that the sores in her mouth have healed since she arrived at the hospital, and that she had no idea she could ever lose weight while eating “normally.” It is true that following a hospital meal plan, or beginning intuitive eating in later stages of recovery, MAY results in significant weight loss. But it’s never guaranteed, and it should never be the goal of eating disorder treatment. Prescribing someone with Bulimia weight loss is like prescribing alcohol or illicit drugs to treat addiction. Skin and Bones is yet another book that comes so close to understanding eating disorder treatment, but then falls short. Yes, people in larger bodies have eating disorders. Yes, many people with Bulimia are not thin. But intentional weight loss should never be encouraged in treatment! I wish this exchange focused on how abstaining from purging and following a meal plan made Teresa feel.
Informed competent treatment programs put eating disorder patients on weight maintenance or weight gain plans. Eating disorder programs with weight loss programs have a reputation for placing people in larger bodies into weight loss programs, and enabling their behaviors further. I have heard so many horror stories.
People with eating disorders often lack self awareness. A fat patient with Atypical Anorexia and an underweight patient with Anorexia Nervosa may both under eat without realizing it. Since weight bias is so ingrained in our culture, even professionals are guilty of stereotyping patients and making assumptions based on appearance. Both patients in this example eat significantly under their calorie needs. Both clients may report to their clinicians that they feel they are eating too much. Sadly, clinicians are more likely to challenge the cognitive distortions of the underweight client, but assume the larger client is in fact, overeating. The underweight client will be nudged in the direction of recovery. The client in a larger body will be encouraged to control their portions. But both interventions will be framed as “treatment”. In clients that binge eat, encouraging restriction further perpetuates the restrict-binge and restrict-binge-purge cycle. One simple solution for preventing problems such as these in eating disorder treatment is to reform or shut down all eating disorder programs that have weight loss components. While this model may not harm every patient, there will always be casualties. This is one thing I will never budge on. (To learn more about the harm that weight loss based interventions do in eating disorder treatment, I strongly encourage this episode of The Food Psych Podcast: #178: The Truth About High-Weight Anorexia with Erin Harrop.)
While different eating disorders are depicted in Skin and Bones, only low weight Anorexics ever appear to be in mortal danger. I also don’t believe this book has any characters with Atypical Anorexia. The Anorexics are thin. The Bulimics and Binge Eaters are fat. There aren’t any significant “in between” type characters.
Quote from book:
“He tried to match name tags with body types: Elizabeth (cute and chubby- probably a recovering bulimic), Daphne (ditto), Cynthia (obviously ex-anorexic), Christy (impossible to tell), Phil (definitely a snacks-in-front-of-the-tv-over-eater.)”
Sherry Shahan is sincerely trying to show that people with eating disorders come in all sizes. But she is still perpetuating the myth that you can tell how a person eats by their body type. Bones could easily be wrong about every single diagnosis listed in this passage.
The major selling point for this novel is its male protagonist with an eating. Even if you don’t find “Skin and Bones” to be particularly compelling, THANK GOD it’s something new in the world of YA eating disorder books.
Potential Triggers
The body shaming in this book is excessive. Shahan immediately introduces sympathetic fat characters. But since the protagonist has Anorexia, they are seen through the lens of a fatphobic person. There is a gradual shift throughout the book in Bones perception of the fat people he people he meets in treatment. It serves a narrative purpose. But this is a trope I wish these types of books would move away from.
When Jack “Bones” is brought to his room, he finds that it’s filled with cookbooks, cooking magazines, and recipes mounted to a bulletin board. He is appalled that he’s going to be “stuck with a roommate who was obsessed with eating.” In his first appearance, “Lard” is described as “a short, squat guy with a slightly dangerous body mass…He even looked like a food addict.” Bones’ disgust of fat patients on the unit, such as his roommate Lard, and Teresa, a girl with Bulimia, is pretty apparent in the beginning of the book. There are still parts of this story that feel like elongated fat jokes. Such as when the narration states that Jack can hear Lard saying the words, “Little Debbies” in his sleep. (I’m calling BS.) Teresa, who is fat herself, makes jokes at the expense of fat people on television. In a game of truth or dare, Teresa actually confronts Jack about how he treats her. Later on, Jack apologizes for treating her poorly when they first met.
The book lists calories to provide insight into the mind of a person with an eating disorder. Low body weights of characters with Anorexia are frequently mentioned. With Bones and Alice, it does appear to be tracking their treatment progress. But later in the book, we meet a character named Julia who talks about a dangerously low weight she reached at a near death experience. Shahan could have gotten the point across without attaching a shocking number.
Twice, this book confronts the issue of sexual abuse. Teresa reveals in a group session that she was molested as a child by her neighbor, but her family forbids her from speaking about it. On Family Day, when all of the patients have relatives attend group with them, Dr. Chu encourages Teresa to address it out in the open.
Confronting the issue in this way goes against what I learned both in graduate school for mental health counseling, and in my own treatment experiences. When I was in eating disorder treatment, we were told not to discuss the specific details of our trauma in group settings to avoid triggering other members. (This was primarily the case for sexual and physical abuse.) So doing this in front of other patients, AND their families, is unthinkable to me.
The family therapy scene as a whole is a mess, because it paints Dr. Chu as totally incompetent. I know through Jack’s eyes, Dr. Chu is a dorky adult, who wears silly ties and spills food on himself. And this may not be an accurate representation, playing into the trope of The Unreliable Narrator. But forcing an adolescent, survivor of sexual abuse to disclose her history to a room full of strangers is incredibly irresponsible. Dangerous, even.
I know people with eating disorders go to extreme measures. But Shahan seems oddly fixated on laxative abuse. Another title for this novel could be “100 Uses and Abuses for Chocolate Laxatives.” We hear about people baking them in brownies, melting them onto magazine pages and licking them off. In “Iris and Jim”, they say Iris was hospitalized consuming a carton of them after fasting. When Jim goes to visit Iris in the ICU, he is consuming laxatives as she goes into cardiac arrest. Both events are fortunately omitted from “Skin and Bones.”
But the most egregious example plays into Alice’s escape. During their unauthorized outing, Alice had purchased laxatives at a drug store, melted them on the heat vent, and painted them onto the pages of a magazine with a makeup brush, so she could sneak him into the hospital. After Dr. Chu informs the boys Alice is missing, Bones searches her room and finds the pages of her magazine have been licked clean and tossed in the trash.This is perhaps what I understand least about the novel. Alice orchestrates this outing as a rouse to escape the hospital. But before running out, carrying everything she brought into the hospital with her, she consumes laxatives. Wouldn’t this slow her down, for her obvious reasons?
Since the book is from the point of view of a hormonal teenaged boy, he fantasizes a lot. There is discussion of erections and masturbation. And one canon sex scene. Bones often sexualizes Alice and her emaciated body outside the context of sexual activity. (The most cringy example is probably a passage where Bones talks about wanting to play Alice’s rib cage like xylophone.) Alice often flirts back, because doing so makes it easier to manipulate Bones into doing her favors.
Lard
Please allow me to talk about my favorite character in Skin and Bones. David Kowlesky insists upon being called “Lard.” And while I’m not crazy about the nickname, it’s similar to Rebel Wilson’s character in Pitch Perfect, who simply goes by “Fat Amy.”
Lard explains, “I learned a long time ago that if you’re fat and don’t give yourself a nickname, someone else will.” Jack’s nickname, “Bones” doesn’t serve a narrative purpose. I don’t care for it. I don’t care for the title of the book Lard and Bones, and someone they meet later in an outpatient support group who used to go by “Rake’, are the only patients with nicknames. Bones repeatedly refers to the orderly, Bruno, as “Unibrow.”
In a lot of ways, Lard is the stereotypical, cartoon caricature of a “fat kid.” He has dorky glasses. He hides twinkies in a Toy Story lunchbox. He eats “Cheese Doodles”, and drives a car that resembles one so closely he calls it the “The Doodle.” I wish Shahan was more original and relied less on stereotypes, but Lard also kind of pulls it off.
We don’t know a great deal about Lard’s recovery process. But he has apparently found solace in the culinary arts. “I’m a compulsive eater. I’ve always sneaked food, kept secret stashes, gorged when no one was around. Now I have a reason to be around food- a reason that makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.” He also works in the hospital kitchen during his stay, and is close friends with Chef Gumbo. This is another convenient plot device that allows for some of the aforementioned shenanigans.
Lard and Bones are meant to be opposites, in more ways than just their size. They play off each other well, and I enjoy their banter.
Lard plays the straight man to Bones. He challenges Bones irrational thinking, often in humorous ways. He expresses on multiple occasions his desire for other patients to leave the program without looking back. He knows if they don’t return, it means they are finally embracing recovery. He has a fundamental understanding of what it takes to get well, and why others struggle to do so. “There’s no magic pill for what we have…especially if you don’t admit there’s a problem.”
Lard is also willing to call both Bones and Alice out on their crap. My favorite Lard quote is probably, “Trying to appear tragic in an eating disorder ward is redundant.”
The Love Story
Bones is smitten with Alice the moment they meet. Although Karen Carpenter isn’t named until later, The Carpenter’s hit, “We’ve Only Just Begun” is literally playing on the radio when they formally meet. Alice begins to flirt back, asking Bones for favors. Alice takes advantage of Bones’ feeling for her, and his reluctance to recover. Bones mistakes his infatuation with Alice for love, and their shared illnesses as a form of intimacy. He sneaks out of his room at night, and into hers, to move furniture for her, film her dace practices, and at times massage her feet and back. (For some reason, Dr. Chu permits Alice to a video camera in the hospital.) One night in particular, Alice practices outside of the hospital gift shop rather than in her room. This is another one of those parts where it’s difficult to suspend my disbelief. While the book mentions them having to sneak around the night staff, psychiatric hospitals typically check on their patients every 30-60 minutes. On a mixed gender unit, especially for teenagers, staff would go to great lengths to keep boys and girls out of each other’s rooms. (I’ve heard a lot of consensual gay inpatient hookups, but staff are probably wising up to that too.) In a competent hospital, there is no way Alice and Bones wouldn’t be caught in each other’s rooms, at some point. While this is an eating disorder unit in a general hospital, rather than an eating disorder unit in a psychiatric hospital, people in inpatient programs are typically locked in and cannot leave the unit without staff. While this program doesn’t appear to be for patients who are suicidal, or experiencing hallucinations, delusions, or mania, it’s unthinkable that patients are able to access the roof and other parts of the hospital so easily.
Shit hits the fan when Alice finds blank menu cards she stowed on the unit during her previous hospital stay. She fills them in with low calorie foods. She asks Lard to substitute it with the one staff filled out for her, so she can eat a low calorie meal. He refuses, so she persuades Bones to do it instead. Since this a terrible hospital, with no dietitians, and meal supervision is rare, no one notices Alice is served vegetable broth, jello, and a cracker for a meal. Later that same day, she goes into cardiac arrest. Bones is able to run straight off the unlocked unit and follower her tothe ICU.
When he returns to the unit, one of the nurses is telling the other patients about Karen Carpenter’s death. Overhearing this exchange is what leads Bones to understand the severity of Alice’s illness.
Bones, while not fully committed to his own recovery yet, refuses to continue enabling Alice. She shows Bones affection when he helps her use behaviors, and withholds it when he won’t submit to her demands. Her final act is persuading Lard and Bones to help her escape the hospital, without them even realizing that’s what they were doing. Lard, for some reason, is allowed to have his car keys in the hospital. (Most programs lock those things up, unless you’re going out on a pass.) The three teenagers are able to leave the hospital, crash a hotel happy hour, and return. Their escape does not go unnoticed. But for whatever reason, Dr. Chu chose neither to inform their parents or the police of their disappearance.When they return to the hospital, Bones and Alice split apart from Lard, and end up alone in an elevator. Alice kisses Bones and gratifies him sexually. Bones believes this is a consumption of their relationship, but in reality, she is distracting him so she can escape. They split up, and Jack returns to the hospital in a daze. When Alice doesn’t turn up, Bones and Lard assume she got caught by staff. Early the next morning, Dr. Chu wakes Lard and Bones for questioning. He informs them that he was aware they left hospital grounds, but that Alice had returned, only to claim her belongings.
At the story’s conclusion, Bones hopes that Alice will come out of her coma and choose recovery. I honestly don’t know if it makes the book better or worse that it ends uncertainly. Rather than confirming whether Alice lives or dies, she is left in a coma. Would her death give the story more weight? Shahan may have intentionally done this so readers can choose their own ending. I know there are young readers out there that prefer to believe Alice lives, and that she and Bones get together again down the road. But even if Alice lived, Bones deserves better. He deserves a relationship that isn’t built on manipulation, deceit, and sickness.
Read more: https://bitemeblogs.wordpress.com/201...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 27, 2023
I loved everything about this book until the ending not what I wanted or expected honestly a little sad about it.
August 7, 2021
This was...horrific.
As someone who is absolutely fascinated by the representation of eating disorders in literature, a novel focusing on a male immediately drew me in.
Jack Plumb, A.K.A. 'Bones' is admitted into an inpatient unit for his anorexia for six weeks over the summer. There he meets Lard, his roommate who is a compulsive eater and an anorexic ballerina called Alice.
There are so many issues with this book but the one which enrages me is the glamorization of hospitals. Evidently, Shahan did no research into the rules or protocols of psychiatric units because realistically, patients who struggle with exercise are not going to be left unsupervised for hours at a time, Alice, who's illness is so severe she ended up in the ICU multiple times is not going to be allowed to dance between heart attacks, a binge eater isn't going to be permitted into the kitchens unsupervised and the anorexics won't be able to tamper with food, or will they be forced to disclose personal information or trauma in a group setting or leave whenever they want, body-shame other patients, steal knives or go up to the roof to smoke pot. Shahan makes the entire experience seem like a fun summer camp, where they can do whatever they want, meet friends and go for long drives when they feel like it. Imagine the damage inflicted onto vulnerable readers. What would impressionable people think about hospitals now?
Furthermore, the portrayal of the illnesses in general are disgusting. Where are the signs of starvation? The intense migraines that leave you unable to see? The stomachaches so crippling that you wish for death? Thinning hair? Rotten teeth? Weakness and fatigue, so deep you feel it in your bones? All we see is Jack, being thin and absolutely loving it with no consequence of it whatsoever. Alice's storyline offers some realism but it's just not enough to illustrate how horrific these diseases truly are.
To people with eating disorders, this book is unreadable. Not just because of the romanticisation of the disease they're dying from but because of how triggering it is. His weight, calorie intake, the nutritional profile of everything consumed is mentioned to the point I barely made it past the first page. It's horribly unnecessary, damaging and breeds competition and invalidation.
The characters themselves are also bland and terribly written. Lacking personality or substance, I found myself rolling my eyes at Alice and Jack's relationship, how they were proclaiming love within weeks of meeting. Love? More like infatuation, they're addicted to each other the way they're addicted to thinness, feeding off each other's disorders.
In addition to this, the prose was gross. Absolutely disgusting. Other than the constant updates of the smell and colour of his urine, the documentation of Jack smelling Alice's sweat and shoes, wanting to kiss her foot bunions (yeah, I know, what the f-) and saying someone's skin was 'the colour of hot cocoa with more milk than chocolate', the usage of OCD as an adjective is the thing that topped it off. How can Shahan write a novel depicting mental illness but then still do the most offensive and stereotypical action of using them as descriptive words? As I said, poorly researched.
In conclusion, this is one of the worst novels I've ever read, misinformed and insulting, harmful to the people the book is about and incredibly badly written.
As someone who is absolutely fascinated by the representation of eating disorders in literature, a novel focusing on a male immediately drew me in.
Jack Plumb, A.K.A. 'Bones' is admitted into an inpatient unit for his anorexia for six weeks over the summer. There he meets Lard, his roommate who is a compulsive eater and an anorexic ballerina called Alice.
There are so many issues with this book but the one which enrages me is the glamorization of hospitals. Evidently, Shahan did no research into the rules or protocols of psychiatric units because realistically, patients who struggle with exercise are not going to be left unsupervised for hours at a time, Alice, who's illness is so severe she ended up in the ICU multiple times is not going to be allowed to dance between heart attacks, a binge eater isn't going to be permitted into the kitchens unsupervised and the anorexics won't be able to tamper with food, or will they be forced to disclose personal information or trauma in a group setting or leave whenever they want, body-shame other patients, steal knives or go up to the roof to smoke pot. Shahan makes the entire experience seem like a fun summer camp, where they can do whatever they want, meet friends and go for long drives when they feel like it. Imagine the damage inflicted onto vulnerable readers. What would impressionable people think about hospitals now?
Furthermore, the portrayal of the illnesses in general are disgusting. Where are the signs of starvation? The intense migraines that leave you unable to see? The stomachaches so crippling that you wish for death? Thinning hair? Rotten teeth? Weakness and fatigue, so deep you feel it in your bones? All we see is Jack, being thin and absolutely loving it with no consequence of it whatsoever. Alice's storyline offers some realism but it's just not enough to illustrate how horrific these diseases truly are.
To people with eating disorders, this book is unreadable. Not just because of the romanticisation of the disease they're dying from but because of how triggering it is. His weight, calorie intake, the nutritional profile of everything consumed is mentioned to the point I barely made it past the first page. It's horribly unnecessary, damaging and breeds competition and invalidation.
The characters themselves are also bland and terribly written. Lacking personality or substance, I found myself rolling my eyes at Alice and Jack's relationship, how they were proclaiming love within weeks of meeting. Love? More like infatuation, they're addicted to each other the way they're addicted to thinness, feeding off each other's disorders.
In addition to this, the prose was gross. Absolutely disgusting. Other than the constant updates of the smell and colour of his urine, the documentation of Jack smelling Alice's sweat and shoes, wanting to kiss her foot bunions (yeah, I know, what the f-) and saying someone's skin was 'the colour of hot cocoa with more milk than chocolate', the usage of OCD as an adjective is the thing that topped it off. How can Shahan write a novel depicting mental illness but then still do the most offensive and stereotypical action of using them as descriptive words? As I said, poorly researched.
In conclusion, this is one of the worst novels I've ever read, misinformed and insulting, harmful to the people the book is about and incredibly badly written.
December 9, 2013
Full review at: http://thebookshelfgargoyle.wordpress...
I received an egalley of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Ten second synopsis:
Anorexic lad Bones spends time in an inpatient program for teens with eating disorders. He is befriended by Lard, bewitched by Alice and learns that being comfortable in his own skin is as innovative an idea as cooking your dinner in the dishwasher.
The standout factor of this book is the way in which it presents the prevalent problem of body image and eating disorders from the male perspective. Shahan has cleverly chosen two ordinary, likeable characters, Bones and Lard, to be the poster boys for anorexia and compulsive overeating respectively. The reader is invited into the minds of these two young men, and is introduced through them to the reality of life for many young people as they attempt to manage competing ideas about who they should be and how they should present themselves to the world.
I enjoyed Skin and Bones. The plot was well-paced, there was plenty of humour along the way and the subject matter was new enough to me to keep me interested in how the characters would manage their next food-based fear. Unfortunately though,I never felt that this book was a standout read. Books for this age group that are set in psychiatric facilities tend to be formulaic in both plot trajectory and character development, and while this didn't particularly detract from the story, it was a factor in this being a merely average read, rahter than something spectacular.
Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to any readers of YA who enjoy a bit of realism and have an interest in eating disorders and body image.
I received an egalley of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Ten second synopsis:
Anorexic lad Bones spends time in an inpatient program for teens with eating disorders. He is befriended by Lard, bewitched by Alice and learns that being comfortable in his own skin is as innovative an idea as cooking your dinner in the dishwasher.
The standout factor of this book is the way in which it presents the prevalent problem of body image and eating disorders from the male perspective. Shahan has cleverly chosen two ordinary, likeable characters, Bones and Lard, to be the poster boys for anorexia and compulsive overeating respectively. The reader is invited into the minds of these two young men, and is introduced through them to the reality of life for many young people as they attempt to manage competing ideas about who they should be and how they should present themselves to the world.
I enjoyed Skin and Bones. The plot was well-paced, there was plenty of humour along the way and the subject matter was new enough to me to keep me interested in how the characters would manage their next food-based fear. Unfortunately though,I never felt that this book was a standout read. Books for this age group that are set in psychiatric facilities tend to be formulaic in both plot trajectory and character development, and while this didn't particularly detract from the story, it was a factor in this being a merely average read, rahter than something spectacular.
Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to any readers of YA who enjoy a bit of realism and have an interest in eating disorders and body image.
Read
April 27, 2015Anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating take center stage in SKIN AND BONES by Sherry Shahan. This book takes readers into the world of eating disorders where Jack "Bones" and David "Lard" are attempting to identify the demons that have taken over the food portion of their lives.
Bones is anorexic. His fear of gaining weight has become a threat to his physical health. An offhand comment from a sales person years ago triggered his eating disorder, and now his family is concerned that things are so out of control that a six week program in the EDU (Eating Disorder Unit) is the only way to help him.
Lard loves food. If he doesn't learn how to control his compulsive eating, he could literally eat himself to death. Oddly enough cooking and acting as an amateur chef, gives Lard a sense of satisfaction and allows him to work with food and not have the desire to eat it.
Both teens are in a treatment center where they are constantly monitored and are involved in therapy sessions and writing exercises designed to teach them how to cope with their issues. It isn't until Bones meets and falls in love with another patient named Alice that he begins to understand the seriousness of his situation. Is it too late for Bones to change? Will he and his new friends be able to modify their behavior and change their attitudes about food?
One of my students recommend this book as one of the best book she had ever read. It is a worthwhile read and will definitely provided a needed message for teens experiencing body image issues and eating disorders. Many of these books focus on the female prospective, but SKIN AND BONES realistically includes both males and females.
Bones is anorexic. His fear of gaining weight has become a threat to his physical health. An offhand comment from a sales person years ago triggered his eating disorder, and now his family is concerned that things are so out of control that a six week program in the EDU (Eating Disorder Unit) is the only way to help him.
Lard loves food. If he doesn't learn how to control his compulsive eating, he could literally eat himself to death. Oddly enough cooking and acting as an amateur chef, gives Lard a sense of satisfaction and allows him to work with food and not have the desire to eat it.
Both teens are in a treatment center where they are constantly monitored and are involved in therapy sessions and writing exercises designed to teach them how to cope with their issues. It isn't until Bones meets and falls in love with another patient named Alice that he begins to understand the seriousness of his situation. Is it too late for Bones to change? Will he and his new friends be able to modify their behavior and change their attitudes about food?
One of my students recommend this book as one of the best book she had ever read. It is a worthwhile read and will definitely provided a needed message for teens experiencing body image issues and eating disorders. Many of these books focus on the female prospective, but SKIN AND BONES realistically includes both males and females.
August 21, 2018
This book is extremely unrealistic
As someone who has been in treatment for months and only recently discharged I find it hard to believe that the patients get away with this stuff.
Ex. Jack exercises excessively and no one cares, someone is growing weed on the roof, , and more
Also the "anorexic ballerina" cliche was pulled up, yes I know ballet dancers experience eating disorders more than other people but it'd be nice to see a change. Also you don't have to be extremely thin to be a dying anorexic, you can be overweight and anorexic. But this book didn't touch on that.
The staff let Jack know the calories of his meal plan increases and if I'm correct even his weight on the first day. And they don't notice half the stuff jack does.
Also some people actually want to recover and that's usually how it's like in treatment. The fact that no one commented on how jack and Alice were enabling each others anorexia irked me.
Also I felt like jack went from "must be skinny" to "#recovery" in a minute
One minute he's ordering a bowl of plain lettuce at a restaurant
Recovery is a slow process that jack fast forwards through
I give props to the author for having a male main character with an eating disorder
But just bc you did that doesn't mean you get to lazily write the rest of your book
As someone who has been in treatment for months and only recently discharged I find it hard to believe that the patients get away with this stuff.
Ex. Jack exercises excessively and no one cares, someone is growing weed on the roof, , and more
Also the "anorexic ballerina" cliche was pulled up, yes I know ballet dancers experience eating disorders more than other people but it'd be nice to see a change. Also you don't have to be extremely thin to be a dying anorexic, you can be overweight and anorexic. But this book didn't touch on that.
The staff let Jack know the calories of his meal plan increases and if I'm correct even his weight on the first day. And they don't notice half the stuff jack does.
Also some people actually want to recover and that's usually how it's like in treatment. The fact that no one commented on how jack and Alice were enabling each others anorexia irked me.
Also I felt like jack went from "must be skinny" to "#recovery" in a minute
One minute he's ordering a bowl of plain lettuce at a restaurant
Recovery is a slow process that jack fast forwards through
I give props to the author for having a male main character with an eating disorder
But just bc you did that doesn't mean you get to lazily write the rest of your book
October 4, 2018
In this book told from a male perspective about his fight with anorexia and in patient treatment we meet, Bones as his inpatient roommate Lard calls him he suffers from compulsive overeating unlike Bones, an anorexic boy and group therapy shows him how others suffer to with food disorders.
I liked the flair of romance in the book as we see Bones fall for anorexic girl Alice, a ballet dancer wanting to perform for a company.
We see how control is taken from them and they try to take it back. We also see how dangerous their battles are with food.
It was believable and realistic as the teens all deal with real issues in relatable ways because of various reasons. We see their struggles and how much they are controlled in their thoughts about food.
I liked the flair of romance in the book as we see Bones fall for anorexic girl Alice, a ballet dancer wanting to perform for a company.
We see how control is taken from them and they try to take it back. We also see how dangerous their battles are with food.
It was believable and realistic as the teens all deal with real issues in relatable ways because of various reasons. We see their struggles and how much they are controlled in their thoughts about food.
December 25, 2017
I really wanted to finish this one. I feel a little bad for putting it down, given what an important topic it is, especially giving boys who deal with this some attention, but this was bad. So, so bad. It was honestly shameful the way it called people who have bulimia instead of anorexia “disgusting.” I wish the author had handled the subject matter better. Young men deserve representation with matters like this, and I hope someone else will take up a topic like this and respectfully address it.
May 4, 2020
From my review on DiverseKidsBooks.org:
Skin and Bones by Sherry Shahan delineates a sobering and startling look into the minds of teenagers with eating disorders. From the beginning we learn that svelte 16-year-old Jack Plumb, who weighs 103 pounds, is obsessed with his weight (in the most stunning ways): He wears only heavy, black sweats to force his body to perspire and rid itself of “liquid fat;” he relishes in the fact that every stomach growl means his body is consuming itself; and he fears the few ounces he’ll gain with every sip of water he takes.
While these things may seem odd to you and me, they make perfect sense to an anorexic like Jack. But Jack knows he needs help because no one actually likes being sick. So he begrudgingly allows his parents to check him into a six-week program in the Eating Disorders Unit (EDU) at a rehab institution. And, of course, he hates it already. There are nurses watching his every move, bathroom doors must remain opened to ensure no one’s purging, and his roommate is…well…not what he expected.
Jack’s roommate is the only other boy in the program, and his name is David Kowlesky. David is a 17-year-old compulsive overeater who named himself “Lard” to avoid giving bullies the upper hand. He’s loud, honest, and wants to be a chef one day—an irony not lost on either of the boys. Despite Jack’s mental disgust with Lard’s appearance and his gross love of food (he has a Rachel Ray poster hanging above his bed), Jack accepts Lard’s help throughout the program and in solidarity nicknames himself “Bones.”
One of Lard’s first duties as in-house best friend and guide is to introduce Bones to the ins and outs of the program and “extracurriculars”. Lard shows Bones where they can unwind with herbal assistance, and even gets Bones a job in the cafeteria setting up and taking down tables and chairs (a sure-fire way to burn extra calories, Bones notes). Eventually, Lard helps Bones get acquainted with the rest of gang, which of course includes the teenage girls in the program. And there’s one in particular who stands out among the rest.
Enter Alice, an anorexic ballet dancer who treats the EDU as a game of revolving doors. This time around, her frail body is working overtime, so she’s constantly attached to an IV bag and wheelchair and is being observed for potential heart failure. But all Bones sees is a breathtaking young woman with similar weight goals as his. She loves to break the rules, and encourages Bones to do the same time and time again. Her frail looks, seductive personality and warped body-image ideals are all attractive qualities to Bones, and he’ll do anything to prove his loyalty to her.
Thus, we quickly learn that Bones and Alice are equally pros at beating the health-care system. They know all of the tricks: from sneaking in laxatives between the pages of a magazine to cheating at weigh-ins by sewing dinner knives into the bottom hems of hospital gowns. And they’re not only experts at staying thin, but at manipulating everyone around them, from family to friends to each other.
So it’s fitting that Shahan describes her novel as a mashup between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Love Story, according to TeenLibrarianToolbox.com. But among all of their antics, family dramas and health issues, the two do form some kind of connection. The only issue is, are they consumed in romance for one another or their own chronic conditions?
Somewhere along the way, Bones’s feelings for Alice develop into a desire to become a healthier version of himself. For Alice, it’s the exact opposite. Ultimately, can Bones save himself and Alice at the same time? Or will he fail at his quest altogether and revert back to his own destructive behavior, letting his family down and potentially threatening his own life?
Skin and Bones is a refreshing young-adult novel because it’s a body-image story with a teenage boy as the central character. Typically, female characters (almost) exclusively portray anorexics and bulimics in books and film. When in reality, 10 to 15 percent of people with anorexia or bulimia are male, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa & Associated Disorders. It’s even a disease that impacts more lives than people realize, as anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents. (In fact, 30 million people have an eating disorder in the United States, compared to 3.6 million people who have Autism, reports the National Eating Disorders Association.)
Skin and Bones challenges readers to reassess their own understanding of body image, personal health and wellbeing. It is staggering to read about the compulsive thoughts anorexics have every day and the lengths they go to not only remain thin, but to disappear altogether. While many of us have an idea of what an eating disorder looks like, you will truly see an entirely different side of it after reading this book. It’s disconcerting and rightfully offers a bleak realism that I only wish was shared more often with young readers.
Recommendation: Highly recommended so teens can privately explore their body image with the understanding that everyone their own age wants to change something about themselves; provides an opportunity to discuss the same topic among family or friends without fear of judgment; Ages 13-18.
Precautions: Adult language; minor sexual themes; some drug use; may trigger eating-disorder thoughts among recovering individuals; may inspire mentally unstable teens to experiment with the severe diet methods mentioned in the book.
Skin and Bones by Sherry Shahan delineates a sobering and startling look into the minds of teenagers with eating disorders. From the beginning we learn that svelte 16-year-old Jack Plumb, who weighs 103 pounds, is obsessed with his weight (in the most stunning ways): He wears only heavy, black sweats to force his body to perspire and rid itself of “liquid fat;” he relishes in the fact that every stomach growl means his body is consuming itself; and he fears the few ounces he’ll gain with every sip of water he takes.
While these things may seem odd to you and me, they make perfect sense to an anorexic like Jack. But Jack knows he needs help because no one actually likes being sick. So he begrudgingly allows his parents to check him into a six-week program in the Eating Disorders Unit (EDU) at a rehab institution. And, of course, he hates it already. There are nurses watching his every move, bathroom doors must remain opened to ensure no one’s purging, and his roommate is…well…not what he expected.
Jack’s roommate is the only other boy in the program, and his name is David Kowlesky. David is a 17-year-old compulsive overeater who named himself “Lard” to avoid giving bullies the upper hand. He’s loud, honest, and wants to be a chef one day—an irony not lost on either of the boys. Despite Jack’s mental disgust with Lard’s appearance and his gross love of food (he has a Rachel Ray poster hanging above his bed), Jack accepts Lard’s help throughout the program and in solidarity nicknames himself “Bones.”
One of Lard’s first duties as in-house best friend and guide is to introduce Bones to the ins and outs of the program and “extracurriculars”. Lard shows Bones where they can unwind with herbal assistance, and even gets Bones a job in the cafeteria setting up and taking down tables and chairs (a sure-fire way to burn extra calories, Bones notes). Eventually, Lard helps Bones get acquainted with the rest of gang, which of course includes the teenage girls in the program. And there’s one in particular who stands out among the rest.
Enter Alice, an anorexic ballet dancer who treats the EDU as a game of revolving doors. This time around, her frail body is working overtime, so she’s constantly attached to an IV bag and wheelchair and is being observed for potential heart failure. But all Bones sees is a breathtaking young woman with similar weight goals as his. She loves to break the rules, and encourages Bones to do the same time and time again. Her frail looks, seductive personality and warped body-image ideals are all attractive qualities to Bones, and he’ll do anything to prove his loyalty to her.
Thus, we quickly learn that Bones and Alice are equally pros at beating the health-care system. They know all of the tricks: from sneaking in laxatives between the pages of a magazine to cheating at weigh-ins by sewing dinner knives into the bottom hems of hospital gowns. And they’re not only experts at staying thin, but at manipulating everyone around them, from family to friends to each other.
So it’s fitting that Shahan describes her novel as a mashup between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Love Story, according to TeenLibrarianToolbox.com. But among all of their antics, family dramas and health issues, the two do form some kind of connection. The only issue is, are they consumed in romance for one another or their own chronic conditions?
Somewhere along the way, Bones’s feelings for Alice develop into a desire to become a healthier version of himself. For Alice, it’s the exact opposite. Ultimately, can Bones save himself and Alice at the same time? Or will he fail at his quest altogether and revert back to his own destructive behavior, letting his family down and potentially threatening his own life?
Skin and Bones is a refreshing young-adult novel because it’s a body-image story with a teenage boy as the central character. Typically, female characters (almost) exclusively portray anorexics and bulimics in books and film. When in reality, 10 to 15 percent of people with anorexia or bulimia are male, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa & Associated Disorders. It’s even a disease that impacts more lives than people realize, as anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents. (In fact, 30 million people have an eating disorder in the United States, compared to 3.6 million people who have Autism, reports the National Eating Disorders Association.)
Skin and Bones challenges readers to reassess their own understanding of body image, personal health and wellbeing. It is staggering to read about the compulsive thoughts anorexics have every day and the lengths they go to not only remain thin, but to disappear altogether. While many of us have an idea of what an eating disorder looks like, you will truly see an entirely different side of it after reading this book. It’s disconcerting and rightfully offers a bleak realism that I only wish was shared more often with young readers.
Recommendation: Highly recommended so teens can privately explore their body image with the understanding that everyone their own age wants to change something about themselves; provides an opportunity to discuss the same topic among family or friends without fear of judgment; Ages 13-18.
Precautions: Adult language; minor sexual themes; some drug use; may trigger eating-disorder thoughts among recovering individuals; may inspire mentally unstable teens to experiment with the severe diet methods mentioned in the book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 4, 2015
It was great but I feel like it didn't cover as much inner battle for bones as I would've liked to see. Love the characters and the friendships made though.
February 5, 2017
2.5
Eeeeeeugh manic pixie dream girl g a l o r e
Eeeeeeugh manic pixie dream girl g a l o r e
June 16, 2017
Skin and bones by Sherry Shahan. This book was published in 2014. it is 270 pages long. The book was told in a third person point of view.
Skins and bones was inspired by a short story sherry worte called ''iris and jim''
The book is about a teenager called jack, who is 16 and has anorexia. he spends the summer in a eating disorder ward. he befriends both his overweight roommate and a dangerously thin dancer. When Bones meets Alice, who loves to break the rules, he lets his guard down even more. Soon Bones is so obsessed with Alice that he's willing to risk everything-even his recovery.
Alice is a 17 year old girl who like jack also has Anorexia. She want to becoming a professional dancer. She is the type of person who don't like anything that keeps her from getting what she wants.
David is a 17 year old boy who is a compulsive overeater, his nickname is ''Lard''
he is Jacks roommate. He and Jack talk about nicknames and he picks ''Thoothpick'' for Jack. Jack says he likes the nickname ''bones''
David loves to cook and wants to be the next celebrity chef, He likes to sneak onto the hospital roof to smoke weed. David hates any talk about purging.
I Give this book 3.9/5
There are some parts of the book that felt like they could have been a little stronger.
I didn't like is the romance between Alice and Jack because it' felt too forced and odd especially at first. and also the fact that Jack had a big obsession over Alice, almost though the whole book, As Alice and jack's relationship starts to build, Alice leaves the Unit, she ends up on a bus that was leading to nowhere and then she falls into a coma. Jack and Alice relationship just suddenly ends.
and jack meets another girl And suddenly Alice is in the passed.
A few things that i think that shouldn't have happened in the book is that the staff told them what they weighted.
YOU DON'T TELL THEM THEIR WEIGHT OR CALORIES. That's the worst you can do. The unit in this book is really relaxed and don't seem to care about anything until Jack's first weigh in. He exercises and no one's was there to watch him on his first few days there.
I did like the characters they almost real, I loved the humor and that it keeps it just light enough to fully appreciate the main character's situation.
I would like to have known more of the outcome of all characters at the end of the book.
Skins and bones was inspired by a short story sherry worte called ''iris and jim''
The book is about a teenager called jack, who is 16 and has anorexia. he spends the summer in a eating disorder ward. he befriends both his overweight roommate and a dangerously thin dancer. When Bones meets Alice, who loves to break the rules, he lets his guard down even more. Soon Bones is so obsessed with Alice that he's willing to risk everything-even his recovery.
Alice is a 17 year old girl who like jack also has Anorexia. She want to becoming a professional dancer. She is the type of person who don't like anything that keeps her from getting what she wants.
David is a 17 year old boy who is a compulsive overeater, his nickname is ''Lard''
he is Jacks roommate. He and Jack talk about nicknames and he picks ''Thoothpick'' for Jack. Jack says he likes the nickname ''bones''
David loves to cook and wants to be the next celebrity chef, He likes to sneak onto the hospital roof to smoke weed. David hates any talk about purging.
I Give this book 3.9/5
There are some parts of the book that felt like they could have been a little stronger.
I didn't like is the romance between Alice and Jack because it' felt too forced and odd especially at first. and also the fact that Jack had a big obsession over Alice, almost though the whole book, As Alice and jack's relationship starts to build, Alice leaves the Unit, she ends up on a bus that was leading to nowhere and then she falls into a coma. Jack and Alice relationship just suddenly ends.
and jack meets another girl And suddenly Alice is in the passed.
A few things that i think that shouldn't have happened in the book is that the staff told them what they weighted.
YOU DON'T TELL THEM THEIR WEIGHT OR CALORIES. That's the worst you can do. The unit in this book is really relaxed and don't seem to care about anything until Jack's first weigh in. He exercises and no one's was there to watch him on his first few days there.
I did like the characters they almost real, I loved the humor and that it keeps it just light enough to fully appreciate the main character's situation.
I would like to have known more of the outcome of all characters at the end of the book.
October 14, 2023
the story itself is nice but not realistic at all . Anyone who’s been in a psych ward would know that the EDU in this story is more like a hotel then a hospital. 1) the doctors would never tell patients their weight especially in an eating disorder unit .. 2) the security is non existent here . All doors would be locked 24/7 and require keys or a keycard to get through . You definitely can’t just leave . Also Field trips ? would never happen . Many people pointed out the unit only having 3 main staff (Dr.Chu, Nancy , and Unibrow ) not realistic either but the author may have just left out the other staff for the sake of keeping everyone distinguishable . The patients also only have one group therapy time a day ? No wonder the staff don’t notice them sneaking out. And no wonder Bones wasn’t cured . He may have fixed his eating habits but instead of obsessing over food he just obsessed over his half-dead ballerina girlfriend. Psychologically he was not helped .
Eating disorders are so much heavier than this book makes them out to be and i think the author missed the chance to bring more awareness .
HOWEVERRRR- The story has some pluses too . It features a male with anorexia as the main character which is hardly ever seen. On top of that, he doesn’t fit the usual stereotype of an anorexic (ie. purging , laxatives, throwing up , etc.) Instead he uses solely exercise and restriction . Though non-realistic, The story keeps you sucked in . I couldn’t put this book down .
The book is written in third person pov but the writing is choppy and jumps from person to person making it hard to keep up . At some points i found myself questioning whether it was first or third person because of the confusing nature.
In conclusion , if you do not care about the setting being realistic or not then the story is great , loved it and i couldn’t put it down .
Eating disorders are so much heavier than this book makes them out to be and i think the author missed the chance to bring more awareness .
HOWEVERRRR- The story has some pluses too . It features a male with anorexia as the main character which is hardly ever seen. On top of that, he doesn’t fit the usual stereotype of an anorexic (ie. purging , laxatives, throwing up , etc.) Instead he uses solely exercise and restriction . Though non-realistic, The story keeps you sucked in . I couldn’t put this book down .
The book is written in third person pov but the writing is choppy and jumps from person to person making it hard to keep up . At some points i found myself questioning whether it was first or third person because of the confusing nature.
In conclusion , if you do not care about the setting being realistic or not then the story is great , loved it and i couldn’t put it down .
March 28, 2019
At times, this book comes off as completely inept at teenage interactions, namely how they talk to one another and how they internally monologue. This book is also bad at explaining some of the strange rituals of the eating disorder victims and falls victim to the tried and true method of "also X-people have this problem" by including 2 male-identifying patients in a ward that is full of women, and 1 former patient in the ending of the book. I have no problems with the inclusion of men in this story, but have problems with how the author fails to make this feel authentic, as if partway through writing the first draft, they thought "oh yeah, men should be involved in this conversation as well" and made sure there was at least one man per group - the anorexia patients, the overeating patients and the group of former patients. That being said, this book is authentic to its core in the portrayals of mental hospitals, of how the patients in these programs actually behave, and how patients feel about the doctors who are supposed to be helpful. Quite frankly, the experiences of those in mental hospitals boils down to annoyance at some of the assignments and therapies, but inadvertent joy at finding what works while there. I can't fault this book for anything other than some out of touch dialogue and a lack of deeper exploration of eating disorders.
October 25, 2017
In Sherry Shahan's fictional book, “Skin and Bones” she gives her readers a very real look at the struggles that kids with eating disorders have to face everyday. Her book tells a story of a young boy named Jack who is admitted into a hospital EDU when his anorexia begins to control how he lives his life. Jack’s roommate, “Lard” who has a binge eating disorder helps guide him through tough times and work together to overcome their similar complications and become best friends. “Skin and Bones” is said to be for “young adults”, but I believe it tells a raw story that could be for anyone old enough to handle the eye opening message of this book, which is that we are all going through something tough, but with the help and support of the right people we can recover quicker and easier. At some points the book can get a tad bit dull but what really made it enjoyable was that the story gets very detailed as far as group meetings and therapy which is what many people with an eating disorder have to go through daily. You don’t often hear of boys with eating disorders or the troubles that people with serious eating disorders actually have to face, but it is something that happens all of the time and needs to be recognized.
December 3, 2017
I have wanted to read this book for so long, and I finally got around to enjoying it. It was really nice to see anorexia from a male perspective, because it’s not really talked about or portrayed anywhere else.
I really loved Skin and Bones. I feel in love with the characters, the story kept me enthralled from the first word to the last. However I did have a few issues with it.
1. The “romance” between Alice and Bones. Okay... I really wanted to see them together, to a certain extent. I wanted to see them grow and get well together. It just went too fast. He lays eyes on her once and suddenly he calls her his life and his love. He doesn’t even know her. I just feel the romance could have been much better had it been developed in a slower way.
2. While having a male perspective was nice, I didn’t find the portrayal of everything to be the most realistic. A lot of what happened in the ward seemed very off and some of the mindsets just didn’t feel right. I mean, Bones was exercising constantly in his room, he poured cereal into his shoes, and Alice snuck in fake menus (which someone actually served her without questioning why she was having such a small meal??). Was anyone watching them at all? I’d assume that in an eating disorder unit, someone would at least be continuously checking in on people who are so dangerously ill.
Despite these two issues, I still really enjoyed the book.
I really loved Skin and Bones. I feel in love with the characters, the story kept me enthralled from the first word to the last. However I did have a few issues with it.
1. The “romance” between Alice and Bones. Okay... I really wanted to see them together, to a certain extent. I wanted to see them grow and get well together. It just went too fast. He lays eyes on her once and suddenly he calls her his life and his love. He doesn’t even know her. I just feel the romance could have been much better had it been developed in a slower way.
2. While having a male perspective was nice, I didn’t find the portrayal of everything to be the most realistic. A lot of what happened in the ward seemed very off and some of the mindsets just didn’t feel right. I mean, Bones was exercising constantly in his room, he poured cereal into his shoes, and Alice snuck in fake menus (which someone actually served her without questioning why she was having such a small meal??). Was anyone watching them at all? I’d assume that in an eating disorder unit, someone would at least be continuously checking in on people who are so dangerously ill.
Despite these two issues, I still really enjoyed the book.
February 4, 2021
This novel was quickly enticing right from the start. Our protagonist Jack, better known as Bones, was an easily lovable character. His take on life and his situation made you want to keep reading more and more. Shahans bittersweet way of writing the characters makes you empathetic of them, but at the same time absolutely dumbstruck by every move they make. I wish the ending of the book was a bit longer so that the readers could have had more closure, but at the same time the way she ends the book makes it hard to not think about the characters and the plot for days after finishing it. While reading the book I got a blissful comforting feeling from the sad warmth of the plot and the fact the characters are very relatable. Shahans way of writing was very pertinent and the book was hard to put down. It was full of love, sorrow, loss, and new beginnings, it is definitely worth the read.
July 6, 2018
Ummm... I’m kind of torn on this one. I can sympathize (been there, not for eating disorders, but other disorders:-)), and I think I like the overall tone and approach to the novel, but honestly, it feels like too much too quick. The relationship, the defense, the offense, etc. Deep down I think there’s more accuracy to the story than i think, but maybe in my old age (40!) I’m more cynical than I was when I went through the same thing (15!).
Anyway, Alice is a pretty hard character to like, but I can pick up why Bones liked her. Honestly, Lard was the character to go to. Honest, full of integrity, and just a fun dude. So, a good book, but maybe pushing too much too quickly.
I should add I read this on a students recommendation, so, way to go Whitney.
Anyway, Alice is a pretty hard character to like, but I can pick up why Bones liked her. Honestly, Lard was the character to go to. Honest, full of integrity, and just a fun dude. So, a good book, but maybe pushing too much too quickly.
I should add I read this on a students recommendation, so, way to go Whitney.
October 29, 2025
Often, the image that comes to people's minds when they envision somebody who is experiencing an eating disorder is a sickly skinny girl. Although statistics show this is accurate, boys also experience this issue. Shahan's writing bring this issue to light through fictional characters who are experiencing the wide spectrum of eating disorders. Although some hospital scenes were unrealistic, she did a great job of exhibiting the hubris of youth and the difficulty of recognizing a personal struggle, even when it is life-threatening. Due to the subject matter, this is a better book for someone in recovery or as a book for a high school class rather than someone who is currently experiencing an eating disorder.
March 7, 2022
As someone who has been suffering with a diagnosed eating disorder for two years now, this book is so incredibly hurtful. It directly lists calories, the character’s weights, and has given me ideas for losing weight that i had never even THOUGHT of. The author is romanticizing eating disorders, and she borderline fetishizes it. I bought this book with the hope it would give me motivation to recover, but this was the most harmful thing I could have read at a time like this. This book is disgusting and I would never reccomend it to anyone. If you are suffering from an ED, please do NOT read this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 181 reviews