Customer Reviews
very good - By: , 11 Sep 2002 
I found this interesting as Lori's age was significantly younger than those of the charactersin other popular novels & autobiographies on eating disorders, & this gives the book an interesting slant. At times the 11-year-old Lori is so naive it becomes annoying, but allin all this is a very insightful view into an eating disorder. This is also the only book of its nature that I've come across that really places an emphasis on the role of the parentsin the development of anorexiain the adolescent. It's very easy to hate Lori's mother. To conclude, a poignant & darkly funny insight into an 11-year-old girl's desperate wish to be thin.
A portrait of a desparate girl! - By: Rebecca Brown, 06 May 2001 What would a girl growing upin Beverly Hillsin 1978 wish for at her birthday party? This chess-playing, math-loving whiz of a kid wishes to be the thinnest girl at school, maybe even the planet!
Lori is a brainy kid used to being cute to the adultsin her life, except now they're calling her "different" & "unique". Now her school friends have turned their minds to the mush of makeup & boyfriends, what's a girl to do? Out shopping with her mother, Lori comes across a diary & starts on the journey of her life.
In three seasons this healthy youngster starves herself to the very brink & through her admissions & omissionsin her diary, the reader will also be drawn toward that edge.
A lively, furious read! Fast, funny, fatuous & fearful by turns, Stick Figure is worth hunting up & grabbing. Not only is it a paean to journal writing(& I'm an evangelist for the examined life!), it is an engrossing exploration of the makings of an eating disorder which, back then, didn't have a name. NB. this diary has been expanded by the woman Lori did survive to become.
This would make an excellent book for any girl around the age of 12 & for anyone older who has taken up dieting as a lifestyle. May I suggest you give a journal as well, it could save their life!...
