Faerie

by Eisha Marjara Narrated by Soneela Nankani

Overview

Just days before her eighteenth birthday, Lila has resolved to end her life. The horror of becoming an adult, and leaving her childhood behind, has broken her heart. Faerie, a novel for young people, is the fierce yet gently unfolding story of a hyper- imaginative girl who is on a collision course to womanhood. She likens herself to a half-human fairy creature who does not belong in the earthly world; but in the cold light of day she is a psychiatric patient at a hospital, where she is being treated for anorexia - her sickness driven by the irrational need to undo nature and thwart the passage of time. Lila tells the story of how she ended up on the Four East wing: we flash back to her childhood in the eighties, growing up in a small town as the overweight brown kid of Punjabi immigrant parents: her father, a literary scholar whom she idolizes, and her mother, a housewife - "the most female of all females who found comfort in cooking." Faerie weaves these passages with Lila's downward spiral into life-threatening illness, her budding sexuality, and her complicated recovery in hospital that comes with a price. Written with candor and heartbreaking lyricism, Faerie is a plaintive yet ultimately life-affirming love letter to the bold, flawed splendor that is childhood. Eisha Marjara has written and directed several award-winning films, including the critically acclaimed NFB docudrama Desperately Seeking Helen. Her latest, House for Sale, has won numerous film festival awards. Faerie is her first novel. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 03/28/2016
A young woman looks back on her upbringing in Quebec and her time in a psychiatric ward, in Marjara’s emotionally charged debut. Lila, the daughter of Indian immigrants, has always been uncomfortable with her body, which she perceives as chubby, especially compared to her lean younger sister and beautiful older cousin. When Lila realizes that food is something she can control, she becomes an expert at calorie counting, envisioning a svelte inner “faerie” persona (“The burdensome identity I had carried for so many years had finally withered away, and the faerie had taken me over”). When her weight dips dangerously low, she is admitted for psychiatric help at age 17. At Four East, she bucks the rules, hides food, compulsively exercises, and recognizes a kindred spirit in new patient Alyssa—an alliance that forces Lila to confront whether she wishes to live. Marjara, writing in Lila’s affecting voice, delicately captures the deep insecurities of teenhood, the pressure of trying to fit into one ideal of beauty, and the complexity of anorexia with lovely, flowing prose, underscoring the devastating effects that mental illness can have on an entire family. Ages 14–up. (June)

From the Publisher

"Marjara, writing in Lila’s affecting voice, delicately captures the deep insecurities of teenhood, the pressure of trying to fit into one ideal of beauty, and the complexity of anorexia with lovely, flowing prose, underscoring the devastating effects that mental illness can have an an entire family." —Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

"Faerie is intensely intimate, containing details that will ring resoundingly true for anyone who has ever suffered with an eating disorder. The strange combination of self-hatred that fuels extreme weight loss and pride that comes from the sensation of feeling nothing but hard bone under the skin is achingly true-to-life, but not glorified." —Quill and Quire

"This important account provides a mirror where as yet there is none." —Kirkus Reviews

"Marjara delivers a provocative and traumatic rendering of a young woman's battle with her own body ... There's an authentic feel to the writing; Lila's rage, her lived horror, is palpable." —Vancouver Sun

"Among the novel's many accomplishments, besides being a compelling one-sitting read, is the insight it provides for non-sufferers into aspects of the anorexic's thought process. Lila’s quest for power and autonomy through self-erasure may appear bafflingly extreme, but it does possess its own logic." —Montreal Gazette

School Library Journal

04/01/2016
Gr 9 Up—On her 18th birthday, in the midst of a frigid 1980s Quebec winter, Lila, a Canadian girl from a Punjabi Sikh family, runs away from the hospital where she is being treated for anorexia. Quickly caught, she is put under a restricted regime with surprisingly poor supervision. Over the next year, Lila reflects on her marginalization as an ethnic minority, her free-spirited cousin's banishment after she falls in love with a white man, her mother's rich Indian cuisine, the inappropriate attentions of a high school teacher, and her father's physical and emotional distance as she enters puberty. The novel ends on a hopeful if baffling note, as Lila is released to her family's care after opting out of a suicide pact with another patient but still expresses an alarming degree of self-loathing and ambivalence about her weight. Told in the first person, in a tone more adult than teen, most of the story takes place inside the protagonist's head as she is confined alone to her room. The pace is slow, and the titular "faerie" (Lila's name for the inner creature that she believes is freed as she loses weight) and her passion for photography never feel fully developed. Marjara graphically describes unpleasant medical complications, but this volume struggles in a crowded field dominated by stronger offerings, such as Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls. The book rings mostly true and carries the most emotional power when Lila speaks of her cultural disconnect as the daughter of immigrants. VERDICT An additional purchase.—Laura Simeon, Open Window School Library, WA

Kirkus Reviews

2016-03-16
A fictional look at how seemingly minor childhood and teenage trauma can trigger anorexia and similar disorders. It's the story of Punjabi-Canadian Lila's descent into and recovery from anorexia as told by her adult self; the "Faerie" of the title is the name Lila gives to her budding anorexia, envisioning within a winged self who will only be free if allowed to be divested of flesh. Though Lila's ethnic identity is sometimes irrelevant, at others, as when Lila is experiencing the cognitive dissonance of living in one culture at school and another at home, it's clear that the book adds value to the literature on the topic. Unfortunately, Marjara is not always able to convey how seemingly minor incidents—such as Lila's crush on a teacher who later turns out to have molested a classmate—can lead to anorexia. The fact that the story is being told by an adult Lila looking back leads to a surfeit of telling instead of showing, blunting its impact and hindering readers' abilities to connect with the character. The author's flights of achingly poetic description are the book's other saving grace: her father's camera "glistened against the dusty gold light of late evening, and the smooth glassy lens winked as if to welcome me into a substitute world." Though not completely satisfying, this important account provides a mirror where as yet there is none. (Fiction. 12-18)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170059119
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	06/07/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

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