A Trick of the Light by Lois Metzger (review)

When Mike is fifteen, something changes in his life: driven by an inner voice, he begins to focus on self-discipline, on purifying himself. He drifts away from his good friend Tamio and starts hanging out with Amber, who shares and abets Mike's zeal and teaches him how to control what he eats to control his body and his life. As Mike's parents dive into their own dramas in the face of their failed marriage, Mike's warped focus on self-perfection leads him deeper into dangerous and self-punishing anorexia. The use of Mike's commanding inner voice as narrator slightly misframes the situation, but it provides a chilling and distanced narration that effectively conveys the seductive strength of such an impulse. The book also clearly and compellingly constructs the disease as a control disorder that operates through eating rather than a food problem, and the hints about Amber's underlying disease are initially doled out with some subtlety (though those in the know may catch her devotion to her friend Anna). While the book makes the point that this is more commonly a female disorder by making Mike the sole male in his residential treatment center, Metzger wisely underplays the "boys can get this too" message; the focus is effectively on his journey rather than any accompanying social statement. As a result, the book manages a rare feat, making Mike's dilemma easy to relate to without making it attractive, and readers will sympathize with Mike and find a new understanding of his problem.