I recently reviewed a memoir by Hadley Freeman, who had been diagnosed with anorexia as a teenager, so it was interesting to read a fictional account of the illness, this time from the perspective of a family member.

Ravenous Girls by Rebecca Burton tells the story of 14-year-old Frankie, who is trying to understand her older sister Justine’s admission to hospital with anorexia. Justine, a talented pianist, was about to begin studying music at university when anorexia takes over her life.

In her memoir, Freeman described the all-consuming nature of anorexia – demanding of time and attention, for both the person who is suffering and their family. This is evident in Ravenous Girls, as Frankie and her mother orbit around Justine, constantly mindful of her health.

You really don’t get it, do you, I said.
What? she asked, confused.
I said bitterly, There’s room for only one person in this family to not be okay and that’s you, clearly. Right, Jussy? So I have to be okay.
… Frankie, she murmured. She bit her lip. That’s not how it is, she said.
Isn’t it? I said.
And then there was nothing more for us to say to each other.

Freeman and Burton also describe the constant hunger – something that might surprise people who assume that those with anorexia aren’t hungry.

…I love eating – that’s the whole problem. I want to eat all the time. I just don’t want to want to.
Her sentences were a riddle, all those wants.

Years later, Frankie observes that Justine’s hunger was ‘…a tool she used to stifle her desires, to mute her yearning.’

The story is set in Adelaide, over the summer of 1985. There were plenty of details to anchor time and place – they were carefully used and wonderfully nostalgic (for this reader, who was a similar age to Frankie over the summer of 1985). I especially loved that ABBA provided a connection between the sisters.

She never thanked me for visiting. And yet, with our shoulders pressed together and the Walkman between us and the sweet voices of Agnetha and Freda singing in our ears, it felt to me as though she was glad I was there.

As Frankie navigates her own challenges – changing friendships and expectations, school, and the shift between adolescence and adulthood – Justine’s life has stalled. In the last part of the story, Frankie looks back on the summer of 1985 and reflects on how Justine’s illness shaped her.

I remembered then how I had mistaken the hunger that Justine and Maggie and the others had written into their bodies for something else, some incorporeal yearning.

Burton has packed a surprising amount into this novella and it made an excellent parallel read to the Freeman memoir.

3.5/5

I’m taking a leaf out of Madame Bibi’s book and finishing this review with a film clip.

Before I’d even settled down she started to play again, though it took me a second to recognise the introductory phases. When I did, my breath caught. It was an ABBA song, ‘Happy New Year’. She knew the words by heart… Despite its title the song was as much about endings as it was about beginnings.