Second Star to the Right
Deborah Hautzig
2008 (first published 1981)
Rating: Very Good
Second Star to the Right is an incredibly moving story about 14 year old Leslie Hiller. Leslie is a perfectionist and constantly worries about disappointing her mother. To take control, and she believes, to make herself happy she decides to go on a diet. But things get out of control, when Leslie can't stop dieting. She starts eating less and less, believing that she'll know when she's thin enough. But she's never thin enough. Soon Leslie is throwing up whatever she eats, throwing food out her bedroom window and is too exhausted to even go to school. Leslie is aware that she's slowly killing herself and that she needs help, but finds it impossible to bring herself to eat.
Leslie is soon admitted to hospital, where the treatments and reactions to anorexia seem very dated. It frustrated me so much whenever someone asked Leslie 'couldn't you just eat a little so you put on weight?', not realising there was more to her problem than that.
There is no proper outcome at the end of the novel, which left me wanting to know what happened to Leslie. But overall Second Star to the Right was a very good, and often sad, read. I found it very interesting to see anorexia through the mind of someone suffering from it.
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