The Skinny

The Skinny
Rayni Joan
Key Publications
ISBN: 0-9624415-4-6
Fiction, Contemporary
Reviewed by Dr. Tami Brady

The Skinny is a fictional story based upon the author’s real life experiences from her earliest memories using food as a soothing mechanism during an air raid siren through her dysfunctional childhood to her realizations about how she used food to fill that empty place within herself, twenty-five years worth of memories. The subtitle, Recollections of America’s First Bulimic, refers to an article that the author wrote in 1970. This article, included with the book, describes bulimia, its origins, and its effect upon women.

The author’s fictional alter-ego in this book is Rowena Gay Wine. The author states unequivocally that this alter-ego is her and the experiences are real. From the start of the book, I wondered why the author bothered calling the work fictional at all if it were her true story and why she had used a fictional character to star as herself. I also questioned how much of the story was real and how much was doctored so that the work was still based upon her life. These unanswered questions distracted me reducing the otherwise important overall message of the book.