Ravenous Girls

Winner of the 2023 Finlay Lloyd 20/40 prize "You really don’t get it, do you, I said. What? she asked, confused. I said bitterly, There’s room for only one person in this family to not be okay and that’s you, clearly. Right, Jussy? So I have to be okay. Behind her in the laundry, the washing machine began to shudder as it moved into the spin cycle. Justine wrapped her arms more tightly around her chest. She was hugging herself now. Frankie, she murmured. She bit her lip. That’s not how it is, she said. Isn’t it? I said. And then there was nothing more for us to say to each other." Adelaide. Summertime. 1985. Fourteen-year-old Frankie is struggling to make sense of her older sister Justine's admission to hospital with anorexia. But growing up is harder than it seems, and as the summer passes, Frankie has to try to make sense of her own life, too. Years later, looking back on her sister's illness from the perspective of adulthood, Frankie reflects on its effects on herself and Justine, and on how it shaped the women they became. A quiet, nuanced study of sisterhood and a portrait of the long-term effects of anorexia on a family, Ravenous Girls powerfully explores the chasms that lie between adolescence and adulthood, sickness and health, and intimacy and loneliness. ...