Fragile

Fans of John Green, Ellen Hopkins, and Laurie Halse Anderson will love Fragile.

A painful powerful read, Fragile offers an intense look into the lives of two girls with eating disorders. In clear, gut-wrenching prose, Katherine and Carol take turns narrating their story of destructive behaviors that control their every thought.

It started with a candy bar. One minute Katherine was sitting on the couch watching cartoons, about to eat a Snickers. The next she was running to the bathroom and shoving two fingers down her throat and throwing up. Katherine doesn't know how her eating disorder started; was it curiosity, a jealous competition with her best friend Carol to see who would be the smallest, or was it something else?

All she knows is that she dropped six sizes in five months after her grandmother tried to file for custody of her after her parents divorced when she was at her lowest weight. Katherine feels like she has lost control over her life and the only thing she believes she can control is what she eats. It became easier and easier for her to lie to her dad and say that she had eaten, to lie to herself and say she was full, or to just not eat at all.

At 95 pounds she doesn't feel like a size zero. She still feels fat. When she looks in the mirror she can all she sees is an ocean of fat hanging off of her body even though no one else can see it. Katherine doesn't see food as food. She only sees the calories it contains. Katherine is stuck in a rut in life. And now she's trapped in the small town of Deer's Run New York. Life in Deer's Run is a nightmare come true. Her grandmother has the school nurse, teachers, and lunchroom attendants watch Katherine at lunch, when she goes to the bathroom, and challenges her constantly to eat the foods she's spent half of her life avoiding. Katherine has planned to stay in Deer's Run for her sophomore year. But what he Dad doesn't know is that Katherine only plans on staying long enough to convince her Dad and more importantly her grandmother that she is healthy. Healthy enough to avoid being shipped back to the Rosewood Inpatient Clinic for Eating Disorders, a treatment center for girls like her--girls with eating disorders.

After her former best friend Carol commits suicide death, Katherine listens to the messages that Carol left her. Listening to these messages, Carol's unlikely suicide note, Katherine discovers how everything is connected and how the smallest acts caused the biggest ripples. How each story, each person who touched her life pushed her to her death. Revealing the subtle cruelties of teenagers, from bullying, to rumors, to rape, Carol explains herself, her pain, her story.


Most of the novel takes place in Katherine's head, as she listens to Carol's voice and to the ugly voice in her head, telling her not to eat. To starve, and to purge which she does in chilling detail. As the trauma of Carol's death coupled with Katherine's strained relationship with her parents and grandmother makes her tighten her grip on her eating disorder. To control something as her world seemingly collapses all around her.

Fragile is a gut-wrenching read and a peek into a world where everything is connected and everything comes full circle. Donoghue has created an intriguing character study into the minds of people who make difficult, unimaginable choices. A dark, gritty read from a talented new author.