The Year I Didn't Eat -

Samuel Pollen

Yellow Jacket

2019

400 páginas

13h 20m

ISBN-10: 1499808089

This heartfelt, captivating novel chronicles a year in the life of 14-year-old Max as he struggles with anorexia.

Dear Ana,

Some days are normal. Some days, everything is OK, and I eat three square meals, pretty much, even if those squares are ridiculously small squares.

Some days, I can almost pretend there's nothing wrong.

Fourteen-year-old Max doesn't like to eat, and the only one he can confess his true feelings to is Ana---also known as his eating disorder, anorexia. In a journal that his therapist makes him keep, he tells Ana his unfiltered thoughts and fears while also keeping track of his food intake. But Ana's presence has leapt off the page and into his head, as she feeds upon all of his fears and amplifies them.

When Max's older brother Robin gives him a geocache box, it becomes a safe place where Max stores his journal, but someone finds it and starts writing to him, signing it with "E." Is it a joke? Could it be the new girl at school, Evie, who has taken an interest in Max? Although Max is unsure of the secret writer's identity, he takes comfort in the words that appear in his journal as they continually confide in one another about their problems.

As Max's eating disorder intensifies, his family unit fractures. His parents and brother are stressed and strained as they attempt to deal with the elephant in the room. When Robin leaves home, Max is left with two parents who are on the verge of splitting up. Max thought he could handle his anorexia, but as time goes on, he feels himself losing any semblance of control.

Will anorexia continue to rule Max's life, or will he be able to find a way to live around his eating disorder?

Resenhas (1)

5 (Perfeito)

Someone doesn’t need to understand you to save your life. They just need to care.

É difícil encontrar livros que expressem a sensação de ter passado por um transtorno alimentar por uma época da vida, e como ele possivelmente vai ficar com você pelo resto da vida, mesmo que de uma maneira menos intensa. O autor construiu o personagem exatamente como ele deveria ser, sensível, ansioso, estressado, com muitaaa raiva o tempo todo, e feliz as vezes. Acho que isso resume bem como é a anorexia. Fiquei feliz pelo Max ter conseguido ficar 100% melhor no final, porém também bem emotiva com como se desenrolou tudo e como uma rede de apoio deixa tudo mais fácil. Vou deixar abaixo algumas frases que gostei.

"Because I always have to be counting something." - Capítulo 8

"But when everyone was telling me how good I looked, who could blame me? When you filled my brain with images of stick-thin girls and diet tips and exercise regimes, what did you expect?" - Capítulo 9

It takes the tiniest thought, the smallest push, to move you from one to the other. To ruin the best day ever or make a nightmare seem okay. I live on a knife-edge. I teeter back and forth; a feeling can last a second or an hour or a day. Sometimes, I’m in control just long enough that I think I’ve found a way to balance. To stay on the line everyone else seems to stay on without really thinking about it. - Capítulo 9

It goes like this: Once, a group of travelers stop near a village. They’re hungry, but they don’t have any food with them, so they fill a huge cauldron with river water and put a big stone in the bottom. A passing villager asks them what they’re doing. “We’re making stone soup,” they say. “It’s almost ready—but we could do with a little bit of carrot to make it extra-tasty.” So he goes and brings them some carrots and heads on his way. Then another villager comes. This time they say, “A few herbs would really help bring out the flavor.” And so on. Each villager who comes past brings them a little something—a handful of salt, some beans, a chicken carcass—until, eventually, the travelers really do have a nourishing, delicious soup, which they share with all the villagers. Anorexia is the same thing in reverse. It’s Zeno’s Paradox in super-slow motion. You keep taking stuff away: food. Friends. Family. Until one day you realize there’s nothing left. The hare’s overtaken the tortoise. The soup is just water. - Capitulo 11

Okay, so you’re only in my head. But everyone I know has to deal with you, too. - capítulo 13

Those people who end up saving your life? They don’t need to understand everything. They Just need to Care - Capítulo 29