Book Review

Title: Cleavage

Author: Multiple- Edited by Deb Loughead and Jocelyn Shipley  

Publisher: Sumach Press

Publication Date: September 18^th, 2008

Number of Pages: 186

ISBN: 978-1-894549-76-9

Reviewed By: Monika Wierzbicki (Vancouver Correspondent – Canada)

So as the last few rays of sunshine disappear over the mountain it’s official, gone are days of sandy beaches, flip-flops and fun summer books. You know the books I mean the literary equivalent of the slurpee you allow yourself during July and August, because after all what’s summer without an ice cold slurpee and a fabulously entertaining but (perhaps) less than intellectually stellar summer novel?

Now that summer is over and school (for some) starts up again, many people I notice become afflicted with something as perennial as the common cold I like to call it nutritional reading. Regardless of whether it is entertaining or even enlightening in any way we strangle down those certain books because they are “good for us”. I am as guilty as the next person slogging through required and unrequired reading trying to make myself smarter by reading things that often require me to tape my eyelids up.

When we get very lucky we come across a book that expands our minds, enlightens us, and miraculously is still entertaining enough to make us want read it again and (sometimes) again. Well, I just got lucky because I got Cleavage. The title of this book is enough to make you want to read it and it just keeps getting better from there. I myself read it hoping the title noun might magically pass itself onto me… it didn’t; but thanks to this book I’m alright with that. For anyone who has ever felt too fat, too thin, too flat, and everything in between get ready to embrace the beautiful!

For all women, young and old, this book is a marvelous way to discover or reaffirm that you really aren’t the only one who thinks her thighs are too big, who feels pressure to count calories, and who is slowly being driven crazy by her mother. It consists of fifteen stories about body image, self esteem, puberty and the many joys, calamities, and scream fests that come with the three; all written in a wonderfully direct and often hilariously offbeat way that will make you want to keep reading.

These stories will get you teary, sometimes it’s in sympathy and sometimes it’s from laughing so hard and it’s something you’ll want to give to all of your girlfriends…and their moms. While the book calls itself “breakaway fiction for real girls”, women of all ages will love these stories and their homage to beauty in all of its mysterious, crazy, and unique forms.