Informationen zum Autor Jana Casale is the author of The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky . She has a BFA in fiction from Emerson College and an MSt in creative writing from Oxford. She currently resides outside Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and son. Klappentext "Joy and Annie are friends and roommates with decent jobs, crushing student loans, and an extra bedroom in need of an occupant-ideally someone they don't hate. Theo instantly fits the bill, and soon, Joy and Theo are platonically nesting over movie nights and midnight hijinks. When Annie moves out, Joy happily gets to work creating a cozy home for Theo and herself. Then he brings home Celine, a girlfriend he's never mentioned and quite possibly the most perfect woman Joy has ever seen. Joy is soon tying herself in knots trying to maintain her fantasy that she and Theo are meant to be. Annie is worried about Joy, but she has her own troubles. After moving in with her boyfriend, she realizes that she's become an actress constantly performing his approved-of version of herself. Then, when she receives an anonymous letter accusing her brilliant, supportive boss of sexual assault, she is forced to decide who and what she's willing to stand up for. Meanwhile, Celine may look perfect on the outside, but she's wrestling with some inner demons of her own"-- Leseprobe Joy Let me tell you something about my stomach. It's big and I hate it. I think about it all the time. I think about the way it looks in shirts and dresses, the way it sits over my jeans and hangs over the edge. When I'm sitting, it juts out in the most hideous way with big folds. There's no flattering way for me to sit with it so I think about ways to not sit, and I think about sucking it in whenever it is that I am sitting. I think about what other people think about it, and what they think of me because of it. I never want to look at it, but I can't stop staring at it in the mirror whenever I get the chance. I would love to tell you that it doesn't define how I think of myself, but those are just words and they're not making me feel what it is I want to feel and what it is that I want to feel is thinner. I cry about it a lot, mostly to myself and sometimes to my mom. She usually tells me I'm crazy and that I should stop obsessing. One time, just once, when I'd called and started in on the same conversation about my weight and how fat I am, she said as I was sobbing, Jenny Craig, maybe? And that moment I think about all the time. I'll hear her voice as I wait at a stoplight or even when I pee. Jenny Craig, maybe? I know it would kill her to think that even though she's told me I am thin ten thousand times over, the only thing I think about is the one time she said, Jenny Craig, maybe? I know it would kill her so I don't tell her; I just think it and wonder what motion there was in her heart the moment she said it and I fear whatever that motion was is not part of me like I want to believe everything about my mom is part of me. And then I feel as vast and big as anything else. Empty is the word for it. So I sit down and suck in my stomach and just keep on going, Jenny Craig, forever. Joy was put on birth control at thirteen years old by her doctor, who was a man. He was old and had been her doctor since she was a baby. When her mother had told him in private that her daughter had very painful, heavy periods, he suggested it, and without question they put her on a small dose of hormones. From the age of thirteen until now, at nearly thirty years old, Joy had not ovulated. At first she immediately felt superior to everyone else in her eighth-grade class. If I wanted to have sex right now I totally could, and I wouldn't get pregnant, she often thought. But the thought such as it was was useless because no one had sex with Joy until she was twenty-four. Bes...

Autorentext

Jana Casale is the author of The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky. She has a BFA in fiction from Emerson College and an MSt in creative writing from Oxford. She currently resides outside Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.