A Trick of the Light

Starred review from April 29, 2013
The story of 15-year-old Mike Welles’s descent into anorexia is narrated by the disease itself, the insidious voice inside his head preying on his every vulnerability. The voice waits patiently for an opening, which comes in the form of Mike’s parents’ marital crisis and his insecurity around a new crush, pushing Mike to exercise, coaching him to subsist on next to nothing, and encouraging a friendship with Amber, who is also anorexic. Mike drops weight, isolates himself, and yearns to be thinner, which he equates with true strength. A therapist eventually tells Mike that he has been eclipsed and, “the only real thing about you now is your eating disorder.” Metzger, in her first novel since Missing Girls (1999), lays bare this truth in an unsettling story that offers a painful and necessary account of how eating disorders affect boys, too. Metzger’s choice to cast the disease in the role of narrator forces readers inside Mike’s head, an extremely uncomfortable yet illuminating way to examine this lethal disease. Ages 14–up. Agent: Susan Cohen, Writers House.

July 1, 2013
The narrator of this startlingly original book is a voice inside fifteen-year-old Mike Welles's head. At first, the voice seems to be on Mike's side, urging him to be better, stronger -- "infinitely strong." But then it tells Mike to lie (to doctors, parents, teachers), turns him against his friends and toward self-destructive behaviors, and pushes him to work out beyond the limits of his endurance -- and to starve himself. Metzger's compelling psychological drama takes on the subject of a boy with an eating disorder. The narrative voice -- Mike's eating disorder, personified -- is the star of this masterfully written novel, which becomes a horror story of sorts, complete with a two-headed Cyclops (an art project) and a chorus of voices that sound like something out of Harry Potter (but that help to dilute the one, destructive voice). Eventually -- after a hospital stint, group and family therapy, and sustained support from his friends -- Mike begins first to question the voice, then to acknowledge that it "gets [him] to do things he shouldn't. It acts like it's [his] best friend but really it wants to kill him," and finally to find the strength to begin to take a stance against it. "It won't be easy, Mike thinks, but it's a step in the right direction." dean schneider

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