The Art of Starving

Written by Sam J. Miller

Narrated by Tom Phelan

Winner of the 2017 Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book!

“Funny, haunting, beautiful, relentless, and powerful, The Art of Starving is a classic in the making.”—Book Riot

Matt hasn’t eaten in days. His stomach stabs and twists inside, pleading for a meal, but Matt won’t give in. The hunger clears his mind, keeps him sharp—and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he’s going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away.

Matt’s hardworking mom keeps the kitchen crammed with food, but Matt can resist the siren call of casseroles and cookies because he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have . . . powers. The ability to see things he shouldn’t be able to see. The knack of tuning in to thoughts right out of people’s heads. Maybe even the authority to bend time and space.

So what is lunch, really, compared to the secrets of the universe?

Matt decides to infiltrate Tariq’s life, then use his powers to uncover what happened to Maya. All he needs to do is keep the hunger and longing at bay. No problem. But Matt doesn’t realize there are many kinds of hunger…and he isn’t in control of all of them.

A darkly funny, moving story of body image, addiction, friendship, and love, Sam J. Miller’s debut novel will resonate with any reader who’s ever craved the power that comes with self-acceptance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9780062683465

Sam J. Miller

Sam J. Miller is the Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving (an NPR best of the year) and Blackfish City (a best book of the year for Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, and more). A recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Sam's short stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus Awards, and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. A community organizer by day, he lives in New York City.

Reviews for The Art of Starving

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

teen fiction - anorexic and somewhat suicidal gay male teen deals with the mysterious leaving of his older sister, alcoholic mother, and the negative outlook of a crumbling town, as written by a gay writer who himself suffered from an eating disorder when he was young. #ownvoices

brilliant yet painfully sharp at the same time. Thank you, Sam Miller, that was outstanding.

[kalky_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Matt can’t control much of anything in his life. His dad left when he was a baby. His sister—his primary ally in teenagedom—has run away. His mom is working long hours and struggling to keep her job. Kids at school pick on him because he’s gay. And the school has identified him as at-risk and sent him to a psychiatrist. His life is pretty much a mess, and Matt is focusing on the two things that he thinks he can control—revenge on the boys he has decided are responsible for his sister, Maya, running away, and depriving his body of food. Each chapter of THE ART OF STARVING starts with a rule, and the first couple of rules lay everything out pretty starkly: your body is your enemy, and starving yourself makes you stronger. Matt offers example after example of this as his story progresses… though you begin to realize as you read that Matt, though both charming and interesting, is far from a reliable narrator. Fortunately, we don’t need to be assured that he’s telling the truth about events when he’s giving us deep insights like “…every great revenge story is indistinguishable from a love story” and acknowledges that he’s writing for “boys in general, especially the lost lonely isolated ones, the boys with no one in their lives to teach them The Rules…”. My favorite of Matt’s rules, though, comes late in the book. Rule #44 says “Your mommy really can make everything better.”THE ART OF STARVING is a gorgeous and heartbreaking book that had me saying “what the…?” while flipping pages so fast I barely cared about the answer to my own question. While dealing with all of his troubles, Matt’s search for love and acceptance moves beyond the specifics of his situation and speaks to every reader. The author of the book, Sam J. Miller, writes beautifully and weaves magical realism with an unreliable narrator in such a way that put me in a mode that was as uncomfortable and off balance as the book’s protagonist—but at the same time left me wanting to believe that all of Matt’s experiences were real.This is a book that I’ll want to read and re-read in order to glean those beautiful and sometimes painful truths that the author has hidden in Matt’s story. My thanks to Sam J. Miller for a fantastic book, and to YA Books Central and the publisher for an advance copy of THE ART OF STARVING in exchange for my unbiased review.