Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Thin Girls: A Novel
    Thin Girls: A Novel
    Thin Girls: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Thin Girls: A Novel

    Written by Diana Clarke

    Narrated by Jayme Mattler

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    A dark, edgy, voice-driven literary debut novel about twin sisters that explores body image and queerness as well as toxic diet culture and the power of sisterhood, love, and lifelong friendships, written by a talented protégé of Roxane Gay.

    Rose and Lily Winters are twins, as close as the bond implies; they feel each other’s emotions, taste what the other is feeling. Like most young women, they’ve struggled with their bodies and food since childhood, and high school finds them turning to food—or not—to battle the waves of insecurity and the yearning for popularity. But their connection can be as destructive as it is supportive, a yin to yang. when Rose stops eating, Lily starts—consuming everything Rose won’t or can’t.

    Within a few years, Rose is about to mark her one-year anniversary in a rehabilitation facility for anorexics. Lily, her sole visitor, is the only thing tethering her to a normal life.

    But Lily is struggling, too. A kindergarten teacher, she dates abusive men, including a student’s married father, in search of the close yet complicated companionship she lost when she became separated from Rose. 

    When Lily joins a cult diet group led by a social media faux feminist, whose eating plan consists of consuming questionable non-caloric foods, Rose senses that Lily needs her help. With her sister’s life in jeopardy, Rose must find a way to rescue her—and perhaps, save herself.

    Illuminating some of the most fraught and common issues confronting women, Thin Girls is a powerful, emotionally resonant story, beautifully told, that will keep you turning the pages to the gratifying, hopeful end.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateJun 30, 2020
    ISBN9780063007932
    Author

    Diana Clarke

    Diana Clarke is an author and teacher originally from New Zealand. She holds a PhD from the University of Utah and an MFA from Purdue University. She was the 2022 Writer in Residence at the University of Waikato and is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Canberra, in Australia.

    Related to Thin Girls

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Little House

      Jun 5, 2023

      On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s

      21 min read

    • Article

      Kings

      Jun 5, 2023

      1.Kings lie down to zip up their jeans,buy Cetaphil, candy, magazinesat Walgreens because they canwalk there unsupervised, describeblowjobs they’ve given to seniorsin cars, spend what they think of astheir own money. Home sick from school,they learn

      6 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2019

      Lydia Rosenburg, age 10 Bellingham, WA The boy curled against the rundown brick wall, too weak to even sit up. The pain behind his eyelids had dulled to a throb, but now his world was nothing but darkness. How long ago had it happened? Day and night,

      7 min read

    • Article

      THE greatest LOVE

      Oct 21, 2021

      THE greatest LOVE
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Family Plot

      May 7, 2020

      The Family Plot
      10 min read

    • Article

      Perfection

      Jun 9, 2020

      For years I could barely write a page. I thought I was becoming a virtuoso of smallness while the grief, which is wordless, occupied an ever-greater volume. My friend lived in the estates on the bad side of town. Let’s go to the forest, she said when

      9 min read

    • Article

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2020

      Ivy Lugbill, age 8 Indianapolis, IN I was so excited! My dad and I were going camping! After we packed all our stuff, my dad said, “Hop in!” I grabbed the paper towel roll binoculars I had been making and jumped into the car. It was a really . . . re

      7 min read

    • Article

      Announcing The winners Of Our FLASH CONTEST

      Feb 29, 2020

      I sever the first two fingers of my left hand on a Tuesday. They fall to the ground at my feet, causing a momentary confusion as I wonder what tree has dropped this odd fruit. Then I see the crescent scar left behind by a fish hook and know that thes

      8 min read

    • Article

      Intelligent Creatures

      Jul 6, 2023

      Intelligent Creatures
      19 min read

    • Article

      My First Pet

      Feb 2, 2020

      My First Pet
      9 min read

    • Article

      My Sourdough Starter

      Jul 21, 2020

      I LOVE A HOMEMADE loaf of cut-the-roof-of-your-mouth bread. But I don’t bake. To become good at something, you have to tap into your intuition and play like a child. I know how to do this in parenting, writing, teaching, gardening, music, and cooking

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Book

      Oct 30, 2019

      The Book
      20 min read

    • Article

      TOUCH Wood

      Apr 14, 2020

      TOUCH Wood
      4 min read

    • Article

      I Used to Give Men Mercy

      Feb 12, 2018

      I Used to Give Men Mercy
      12 min read

    • Article

      It’s All Relative

      Aug 1, 2021

      It’s All Relative
      9 min read

    • Article

      What The Magpie Says

      Oct 16, 2022

      What The Magpie Says
      8 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2021

      I have an endless appetite for starfruit,for biting my teeth into the universe and spitting outthe space junk, for licking the rings of my favorite planetsand never slicing my tongue. There’s a story I shareabout my birth where angels circle my dead

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Language of Women

      May 4, 2021

      The Language of Women
      12 min read

    • Article

      Run Your Own Race

      Oct 27, 2023

      Run Your Own Race
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Sep 1, 2020

      Cricket League
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Arrangements: Coming of Age with Books

      Jun 26, 2018

      1.  “How many of you still play with dolls?” Depending on our moods: We rolled our eyes; we buried our burning faces in our arms; we groaned; we shrieked; we wished to be elsewhere; we were present. In the exact middle of eighth grade (the season in

      5 min read

    • Article

      Lost In The Woods

      Oct 12, 2023

      Lost In The Woods
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Space Between Us

      Oct 9, 2019

      The Space Between Us
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Thin Girls

    4/5

    130 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This book was absolutely ravishing !! Tells the toxic, complicated life of an anorexic...however, with the hidden puns and extra dramatic breakthrough of everything, this book was one of the best reads of the summer

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Fantastic. For such a long audiobook, I was engaged the whole time.
    • 4/5
      This book was both notably imperfect and also/still really dazzling. As an authorial choice I thought it was brave to have the narrator speak in the voice of a woman with anorexia. ED's run in my family. (Just my generation, hopefully never again.) At the height of my binging and purging another relative was hospitalized for anorexia and my mother said it was too bad I "couldn't get a touch of that." She was kidding/ not kidding. Bulimia left me with those swollen acid eroded cheeks -- fat faces were not encouraged. In addition to family ties, the disordered find one another, so I have been around a lot of people with ED's. One thing I can say authoritatively is that people with active ED's are boring as hell. There is a constant script going on in your head that makes it impossible to engage meaningfully in other things. You can get things done sure, but your emotional life is all about you and your downtime is all about food whether you are obsesively cooking and baking for others so you can watch them eat or calculating the ratio of calories taken in to calories require to burn off the food you ingest, or taking care of one of the many other tasks of the disordered. Rose exemplified that. For me she did not get interesting as a character until she started to realize she had to recover, and she got more and more interesting as her story went on from there. But even when Rose was boring I was engrossed with her story, and with Lily's whose quest for approval, love, and comfort was even more compelling for me than Rose's quest for control, both had a need to be noticed that was never quenched.Clarke is a very good writer at the sentence level. There are some breathtaking similes, and each sentence shines. She also does a great job of bringing to the fore what is, I think, the book's central point, that we tell girls and women to be obsessed with eating and exercise, to watch out for extra pounds, cellulite, lack of a thigh gap instead of teaching them to be afraid of men who belittle them, who hit them, who grope them, and who jerk off looking through your windows. It is really effective -- especially since most of this messaging about body comes from other women. We are our own worst enemies, and Clarke really brings it home. Other women are also our best friends once they agree to stop pushing that agenda, and Clarke covers that effectively as well. I did think the pacing was off in the first part, and that Clarke missed some good opportunities and failed to explore some of the other stories she starts. I thought the Cat storyline could have been a powerhouse, but she kept cluttering up the dynamic with repeated references to the smell of vomit and cutaways to the early Rose and Lily life which could have been shaved down with no loss to the story, (I had issues both with the amount of time spent on the girls' early years, and the way she cut into dramatic arcs with lengthy flashbacks of yet another shitty guy Lily was dating and yet another time Lily tried to include Rose in activities.) I also wish that time had been spent on Sarah, who is Rose's best friend, but we don't see that relationship at all.Overall I really enjoyed this read. One note, there are some people who reviewed this as a 1-star because it triggered them. That is bullshit (and also a good illustration of the self-involvement of people with EDs.) That means it was well-written. But yeah, if you are living with an eating disorder, or are in recovery at a point where relapse is possible, do not read this book. This seems really obvious, but apparently not.
    • 4/5
      If you have a history of eating disorders, there will be lot of triggers in this book. Narrated by a twin sister who felt she needed to lose weight to become part of the in-crowd. Now in a treatment program, Rose describes what her life is like. This is an excellent debut novel. The relationship between the identical twins in interesting. Some of the things seemed a bit contrived but did not detract from the story. Its an interesting look at how society judges women by their looks.
    • 3/5
      This book will most likely become one of the most important books of this summer. This is an adult novel that wants to be a teen or YA novel -and if I had a teen who wanted to read this book, I would definitely want to read this along with her so I could answer any questions she had.So why then did I rate it so low? Because it pulled too many triggers for me -eating disorders, lesbianism, dysfunctional families, foul language (although in context), bullies, and abusive relationships. It was deep, dark, and tried, in my opinion, too hard to be literary and clever.*ARC supplied by the publisher.