Synopses & Reviews
Before God was a pale, thin man, people worshiped a robust, bountiful woman. This is the Venus of Willendorf." So says Myrtle's friend Margie at the beginning of this novel for young adult girls. Margie advocates self-affirmation and believes that "bountiful" women are to be celebrated, that each woman is to embrace the goddess within her. But Myrtle rejects Margie's friendship after an embarrassing moment and regards Margie as a "kook." Throughout the book, Myrtle struggles with prescribed notions of beauty. An obese girl fighting a compulsive eating disorder, she is self-destructive and shunned by her peers. In college, her roommate, Jada, tries to draw her into a world of cosmetics and thinness, but Myrtle senses that Jada's way is not her own. She sets about discovering her own path through artistic expression and is eventually drawn back to the beginning of the story and to Margie as she gains insight about her own beauty. In the end, she is a successful artist on the brink of self-discovery.
Synopsis
College isn't much more fun for Myrtle than high school was. At least in high school she had her weird friend Margie, who wasn't going to win any popularity contests or beauty pageants either. Now an art student at college, Myrtle has only food and her sense of humor to rely on. Her roommate, Jada, with her boyfriend and her long neck and her dancer's body and her healthy eating habits, is no help at all. Over the course of a few painful weeks in summer, Myrtle finds a path, discovering, through her painting and a prehistoric stone figure known as the Venus of Willendorf, a new sense of self and a different kind of beauty.
About the Author
Rebecca Ben Zvi O'Connell grew up in Indiana, PA. She graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a degree in psychology. At Penn State she took a non-credit class called Women's Mysteries, which was a little bit like the coven in Myrtle of Willendorf. Rebecca attended the University of Pittsburgh's School of Library Science on a full scholarship. She is a librarian in Pittsburgh, PA, where she lives with her husband and son.