The Hungry Mirror

An engaging novel about body image, eating disorders, diet myths and the big fat fabrications and lies that the media forces us to swallow. A compelling, entertaining story infused with fascinating little-known facts about ancient goddesses, curious New Age remedies, the foibles of modern-day celebrities and the truth about retouched images in the world of fashion magazines, from which so much self-body-hatred comes. A story of compassionate vulnerability and determined empowerment. The Hungry Mirror is the fictional tale of a young woman overwhelmed. Lured by false promise and seeking fickle social acceptability, she starves herself and fast becomes trapped when seeming-sanctuary proves a cage of addictions walled by self-hatred and filled with doubt. Within the context of fashion magazines, the young woman is both participant and observer in the perpetuation of the myth of beauty; the retouched images, the impossible standards that ordinary women are expected to follow and achieve. A firsthand account of the role of the media in the war with body image, this is the story of everywoman and the relentless ghosts that pursue her. Increasingly ill, her marriage cold, her family well-intentioned enablers of mistaken social belief, the young woman realizes the choice is hers; to live or die. The work encompasses the complex friendships between women, the unspoken truths about marriage and sexuality as well as various religious and spiritual messages, ancient philosophies, fairytales and legends. In the end, the young woman learns the true value of size zero is indeed nothing.About the AuthorBorn in South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy. She has lived and worked all over the world, and has art directed on magazines such as marie claire, Vogue, Vogue Living and Cosmopolitan. Her fiction has been published in the anthologies Stories from Our Black Book and Simply the Best. Her prize-winning poetry was published in The Boy from New Brunswick. Her first novel, Single Girls Go Mad Sooner, was published in 1995. She lives in Toronto.