After the Strawberry

Lydia Poole wants to be a good person—the kind of person who does everything right and deserves to be loved. To accomplish this, she eats only one cup of Cheerios per day and lets her weight drop below ninety pounds. When Lydia’s sister introduces Jesse, a new friend and filmmaker, Lydia agrees to be the subject of his documentary. Jesse’s camera follows Lydia as she’s hospitalized for anorexia, as she walks the line between hoping for death and wanting life, as her weight continues to fall. With the camera running, Lydia shifts from the viewfinder’s object to the eye behind the camera. In doing so, she discovers how she wants to see her world. After the Strawberry is a novel about a girl who disappears while trying to be seen.