Book Review - Hunger Point

After losing her job (and free lipstick supply) at Revlon, Frannie leaves New York and moves to the suburbs to live with her parents. Despite having graduated from Syracuse with majors in casual sex and sledding down hills on cafeteria trays (minor: Communications), Frannie becomes a waitress at a thinly-disguised chain restaurant, "Rascals," a job that requires her to wear a duck-festooned apron.

Her relationship with her younger sister, Shelley, is the pivotal core of the book. Shelley has always been a classic overachiever and is now severely anorexic and hospitalized in the city. No one else in Frannie's family is much more functional: her mother and father are having marital problems, her grandfather is growing increasingly unable to care for himself and, later in the book, there is a schitzophrenic aunt and a cocaine addicted cousin.

As Frannie struggles to make sense of (and peace with) Shelley and the rest of her family, she also navigates modern dating and works on her relationship with the dreaded "perfect" best friend, Abby.
Cronin Johnston, Resident Scholar