Fairly typical ‘chick-lit’ narrative with a serious undertone, examining eating disordered behaviour in the context of sub-clinical, cultural anorexia.  Main character Natalie works in the ballet / dance industry where eating disorders are common, but spirals out of control following the marriage of her best friend, taking cocaine, stopping eating and falling into a relationship with an unsuitable man.  Many clinical and psychological features of anorexia are presented – for example, control, flirtation with bulimia, distorted body image and over-exercising.

231-2 – “I stare into the box and my insides writhe.  I reach out, my pulse is speeding, the urge overtakes me, I’m possessed, I can’t stop myself, I’m suffocating in lust.

And then I’m snatching, tearing, a wild animal, ripping at the wrappers with my teeth, the purple, gold, red, silver, bronze, all and everything, the loud wanton colours of desire, cramming, stuffing, jamming, oh it’s all gone wrong, this thick gluey lush glut of sweetness it’s molten heaven it tastes like a dream more more I’m hungry hungry I’m so fucking hungry rapacious I can’t stop any longer, that emptiness inside like a yawning monster, grumbling, loud and absolute, I’m feeding, filling the badness, soothing it, pressing it back down, making it go away and oh oh yes it feels so good like ice on a wound, until the noise is silenced and I’m sated.

For about one piddling minute.  And then it hammers in my chest again.”