Bokrecension: The Best Little Girl In The World av Steven Levenkron

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Book report

I’ve read “The best little girl in the world” by Steven Levenkron. This is a really fascinating book about the obsession that kills, the disease called Anorexia Nervosa. Lately I’ve been fascinated by books or songs that you actually learn something from, like that song Seasons of love in the musical Rent, when they sing 525 600 minutes, it sounds great and you actually learn that it is 525 600 minutes in a year.
When we first got this task to read an English book I didn’t even thought it would be that funny, but the more I got into the book the less I could keep myself away from it. I brought it to China over Christmas and I read almost half of the book over there, but later when I got back to Sweden I had so many things to do and I forgot about the book, I started reading it again last week and once I was stuck, I read it to the last page. The clock was about two in the morning when I finally put the book down. And with school the next day, I didn’t look so happy that day…
Well, this books story was about a girl, Francesca Dietrich, a normal kid at the age of 15, with straight A’s in school, ballet as a hobby and an quite normal family, a brother who’s perfect, a sister who always gets in the center of attention, a father who almost always works and a mother who is trying to keep the family together.
It all begins when her teacher in ballet, Madame, tells her that she thinks Francesca is making progress but maybe she should loose a little fat on her hips and her stomach. That’s how it all starts, she all the suddenly thinks she looks terrible, she disgusts herself, all that fat hanging out and so on. She starts making these small habits like cutting her food into quarters and only eat one half of an quarter. The first thing she does is to kill the fat Francesca and gives birth to the perfect Kessa. She starts to isolate herself, she only eats and dance. When she neither dance nor eats she lies in her bed and examines her stomach. She counts how many of her ribs she can feel and how sharp they are. When it all starts her weight was 98 pounds and when she was in the hospital and so close to death she only weighed 63 pounds.
When she is seriously sick, she ends up in the hospital were she meets Myrna, who also is dangerously sick, she weighs 53 pounds and is still up walking, she has been to so many hospitals that she knows exactly how many steps it takes to loose one calorie. She has got nutrition in operated three times and the last time she pulled the tube out of her chest herself. Even Kessa thinks Myrna is sick, even Kessa is disgusted by Myrna.
Francesca’s saving becomes a therapist by the name of Sandy Sherman who is not like others psychologists she has met, in the end she wants him to be her father, and she bet he would ne...