Kay's Bookshelf

Genre: Young Adult Main characters: Beth Baxter, Rachel, Jenny and Melanie Time and place: I would guess 2008/9, somewhere in the US First sentence: “Christine McCady’s hair is especially shiny today,” Jenny told the three girls sitting with her at the lunch table. Summary: Beth is living a normal life for a girl her age: swimming at the beach, spending time with her friends, going out with the boy she likes. And yet she is not happy, something is missing from her life and she doesn’t know what. Perhaps if she’ll lose some weight life will get better, she thinks. She starts a diet to lose a few pounds — a seemingly inoffensive thing at first, and yet soon it becomes an obsession that gets out of control.

Beth is a complex character in herself, mostly because of the antagonism between what’s going on on the outside (her seemingly perfect life) and what happens on the inside (her need to become someone different, her struggle to accept her parents’ divorce). She seemed to me like a smart girl and as such it was a bit sad for me to see her fall prey to peer pressure. Beth’s three friends are probably smart girls too (and probably good people, like I tend to think Beth is), and would have probably been interesting to get to know in more detail, but unfortunately the author kinda leaves them out until they are needed to interact with Beth (for example we know close to nothing about both Melanie and Jenny; we do get to know some things about Rachel but I suspect it’s only because she has some problems of her own).

I have to admit I’ve had a few issues with the book while reading (although I also have to admit I do not know exactly how just they are, I may very well be wrong). The most important one was the fact that the timespan of the book is quite short (a few weeks I think), so everything happened extra fast. For example it seemed to me that Beth has lost too much weight for the short time she has dieted, and her troubles (dizziness, headaches) also seemed a bit exaggerated to me (she started getting dizzy after the first day of her diet). I tend to think though that this is more of my problem than the book’s, because I keep comparing Beth’s experiences to my own (and, although I have had a bit of a radical diet now and then, I have never been dizzy for example) — while I know that every organism is different, and furthermore Beth is at a more “sensitive” age, I cannot truly resonate with experiences that I don’t find that believable.

UPDATE: Here’s the author’s take on the last paragraph:
“This book is a glimpse into these girls’ lives and I kept it moving quickly for my young adult audience. I also wanted it real and honest not only so they would respect and appreciate it, but so their parents or educators could use it as a tool to help and understand. As far as the weight loss in that period of time, as well as the physical side effects that arose from it, it is all very accurate.”
Well, I did think that the author didn’t do her homework regarding the time intervals, but since she says its accurate she probably did; given that I have never actually studied the matter I guess I can only say I was wrong.

Come to think about it, I most likely have had a bit of a hard time relating because I am long past that age (long enough to forget how I have felt back then) and I have no daughters (teenage or otherwise) either. Which is probably why it had all seemed a bit far fetched to me. I’m saying this because, out of all the reviews I read for this book, each and every one is positive so there’s most likely something wrong with my personal taste not the book in itself. I can only be sorry for the lack of more pages, pages that would have helped me understand and perhaps relate to the plights of the characters a few bit more.

What I liked most: The fact that this is a story about friendship and the way it helps one overcome the obstacles life throws one’s way.

I am also quite fond of the title, “Dancing with Ana”, for some reason I find it a great metaphor about what Beth is going through. This because Ana is not one of the characters, Ana is the short name of Anorexia Nervosa, the very disorder that Beth almost falls prey to (and I say almost only because her diet didn’t last that long to put her life in an actual danger). As of the dancing, there is both a figurative side to it (the way Beth “toyed” with her unhealthy diet, taking two steps towards it and, very rarely, one step back), but there’s also a literal dance, best expressed in the following quote:

Beth danced her heart out. She danced out the pain, the sadness, the anger, the frustration, the disappointment, the disillusionment. The crowd gave a yell, and she yelled with them. She released her demons, released them to the sky.

What I liked least: I don’t know. Perhaps the writing style was a bit simplistic at times (understandably of course since this is a book that’s supposed to appeal to a younger audience; not to mention the fact that it matches the ages of the characters, so it may actually be a virtue of the book not a flaw; and yet I ended up wishing for more details and more depth now and then).

Recommend it to? Teenage girls. Also parents of teenage girls. Anyone who can still remember their teenage years I suppose :)

See also:
Dancing With Ana — the site
Dancing With Ana — the Twitter account

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