The Girls at 17 Swann Street
by Yara Zgheib
Genre: Fiction
Synopsis: The chocolate went first, then the cheese, the fries, the ice cream. The bread was more difficult, but if she could just lose a little more weight, perhaps she would make the soloists’ list. Perhaps if she were lighter, danced better, tried harder, she would be good enough. Perhaps if she just ran for one more mile, lost just one more pound.
Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears – imperfection, failure, loneliness – she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere eighty-eight pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.
Yara Zgheib's poetic and poignant debut novel is a haunting, intimate journey of a young woman's struggle to reclaim her life. Every bite causes anxiety. Every flavor induces guilt. And every step Anna takes toward recovery will require strength, endurance, and the support of the girls at 17 Swann Street.
From GoodReads
Anna is a former dancer and develops body image issues. She falls into a trap of eating less and less and can't get herself out of the hole she has created. She and her husband move to the United States from Paris and she falls into a deep depression. She doesn't see what has happened to her and her husband doesn't know what to do. Eventually Anna enters an inpatient treatment center at 17 Swann Street where she meets other young women who are like her. Some have been battling eating disorders for years.
The book is written alternating between the present and flashbacks to things that happened earlier in Anna's life that lead to her issues. We get a glimpse into how her eating disorder came about but yet the cause isn't pinpointed exactly. Maybe that was done intentionally because perhaps there isn't just one defining moment. During therapy, we are able to hear Anna's thoughts which she does not voice to the therapist. We know that tragic events happened in her childhood. Personally I felt that Anna's transformation comes a little too easily. She didn't seem to deal with all her issues, her past, her depression, etc while at the treatment center. I felt like there were a lot of unresolved issues and that her improvement couldn't have happened without dealing with all her issues. The end seemed to come too quickly. This is why I couldn't rate this book with 5 stars.
I still very much enjoyed reading this book even though it was highly emotional.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for providing my book club complementary copies. We will enjoy discussing this book!
Review: This book was beautifully written even though it deals with a topic such as anorexia. This is my first book about an eating disorder and I didn't know what to expect. I didn't expect to be brought to tears several times and have to put the book down because I just couldn't keep reading because of how emotional it was. My heart broke for the characters at 17 Swann Street and the hopelessness they felt at needing to eat.
Anna is a former dancer and develops body image issues. She falls into a trap of eating less and less and can't get herself out of the hole she has created. She and her husband move to the United States from Paris and she falls into a deep depression. She doesn't see what has happened to her and her husband doesn't know what to do. Eventually Anna enters an inpatient treatment center at 17 Swann Street where she meets other young women who are like her. Some have been battling eating disorders for years.
The book is written alternating between the present and flashbacks to things that happened earlier in Anna's life that lead to her issues. We get a glimpse into how her eating disorder came about but yet the cause isn't pinpointed exactly. Maybe that was done intentionally because perhaps there isn't just one defining moment. During therapy, we are able to hear Anna's thoughts which she does not voice to the therapist. We know that tragic events happened in her childhood. Personally I felt that Anna's transformation comes a little too easily. She didn't seem to deal with all her issues, her past, her depression, etc while at the treatment center. I felt like there were a lot of unresolved issues and that her improvement couldn't have happened without dealing with all her issues. The end seemed to come too quickly. This is why I couldn't rate this book with 5 stars.
I still very much enjoyed reading this book even though it was highly emotional.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for providing my book club complementary copies. We will enjoy discussing this book!
Rating: 4 stars
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