SuitabookMassive
Julia Bell
- Reading
- Consider reading together or checking in afterwards, particularly if body image or eating feels personal. You could pause at the mother's opening remark and ask how it lands, without asking the reader to discuss their own body.
- Themes
- Thinness and worth: Carmen's mother insists that thinness means beauty and success, and Carmen questions whether becoming very thin could change things. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Taking control through eating: As her life changes, Carmen begins to take charge of what she eats; the book is categorised as fiction about eating disorders. Eating is clearly tied to Carmen's attempt to regain control, but the available plot details do not establish whether this is challenged, endorsed or resolved.
- Worth knowing
- Weight, body image and control over eating are prominent. The opening also includes Carmen's mother making a disparaging remark about a woman's size and saying she would kill herself if she were as big.