When Michael, a struggling, anorexic young man, comes home to his apartment in Allston, Massachusetts in December of 2000, he finds his live-in girlfriend, Jessie, with her bags packed. She’s moving in with his best friend, Les.
Just when Michael thinks things can’t get worse, they do. Quickly. As his life spirals out of control, Michael’s brother, bestselling novelist and nationally renowned music critic, David, and sister-in-law, Monique, a retired model, finally intercede. Pushed into therapy, Michael begins his uneasy, darkly humorous, and often wildly irreverent odyssey back to well-being.
While he stumbles towards a healthier lifestyle with the help of his nutritionist and friend, Richie, Michael unravels his past through a distorted, food-obsessed lens, which reveals his volatile relationship with Jessie and the comic sexual and traumatic familial roots of his disorder.
Michael’s unique road to recovery has many detours, but when he meets Phoebe, a recovering bulimic and kindred spirit, it seems he’s finally headed in the right direction until two devastating revelations send him reeling. If he is to survive, Michael must make one important decision that will change his life.
Unflinchingly honest and overflowing with playfully revealing references to rock ‘n’ roll, pop culture, and baseball, Call Me Anorexic: The Ballad of a Thin Man is the first novel to explore acute anorexia from a male perspective.
While ostensibly about anorexia and its collateral damage, the visceral, highly charged work also explores the many facets of loss: loss of love, identity, family, control, purpose, appetite, and, yes, of course, pounds. Sometimes, you need to dig deep into the holes in your life if you want to have any hope of emerging whole again.
In the social media age, when how we look and what we eat have become all-consuming preoccupations, the novel’s exploration of a young man’s obsession with body image as he tries to manage heartbreak and the vicissitudes of life becomes a memorable, passionately told story for our times.
