The Art of Starving

3.5 stars Matt was planning to leave but his sister Maya beat him to it. The details of her absence are unknown to Matt but it’s something that he’s working on. He feels it has something to do with Tariq and his groupies and Matt feels he needs to get to Tariq to honestly find out the details. Matt’s mother is no help and doesn’t seem that concerned over Maya’s disappearance. His father, he knows only the details his mother tells him about the man who walked out of his life, the details now are slim. Tariq and Matt run in two different circles, two totally opposite circles and Matt knows that he needs to make a plan, if he’s going to approach Tariq. I felt sorry for Matt as he traffics his way through school, his peers jeering remarks stabbing him as they poke fun at his uniqueness. Their lies an issue with Matt that consumes him. It’s an eating disorder. Matt claims control over this aspect of his life only it’s destroying him. As Matt looks at himself, he sees a boy with many flaws, flaws that he feels he can correct by his diet. It becomes a battle as Matt tries to gain control over this aspect of his life. An internal battle, one that will never go away unless Matt decides to tackle it head on. As Matt counts his calories, his self-image doesn’t change but he feels he is gaining superpowers with his other senses. These superpowers confused me in the novel as I could understand his feeling of heighten awareness but the extreme that these powers became, seemed absurd. I started to question Matt and the powers that he said he had. Committed to finding the answer about his sister whereabouts and reading about Matt’s struggle with food, I enjoyed this novel. My only concern was about the superpowers and their reasonableness.