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rebelliousness. Lastly, in “Inmensamente Eunice” (Immensely Eunice, 1999), Andrea Blanqué depicts the conflicts of an obese woman in her quest to find approval and love. These authors have in common their preoccupation with existing cultural obsessions with thinness, which lead women to engage in neverending diets. Their works suggest that women who modify their bodies to satisfy the social gaze, in fact become accomplices of the same society that dominates and oppresses them. For the most part, these authors favor an experimental system of representation that includes fragmented narrative structures and multiple fictional voices; consequently, they struggle against current notions of female beauty not only through the content but also through the structure of their work.
The fourth chapter, “Aging Words,” considers two novels that explore weight issues among mature women. In Los viajes de mi cuerpo (My Body’s Journeys, 2003), Rosa Nissán recounts the journey of a woman who at forty finds herself both divorced and overweight, while Ana María Shua’s El peso de la tentación (Weight Temptation, 2007) focuses on a professional woman who is able to control all aspects of her life except her appetite. These middle-aged characters have lost their sense of self as they succumb to society’s obsession with a slim and youthful body.
The fifth chapter, “Disorderly Eating,” examines literary representations of bulimia while it attests to more recent writers’ interest in exploring extreme eating behaviors. In Brenda Morales’ “Eso de ser bulímica” (The Thing about Being Bulimic, 2000), the death of a bulimic girl in an ordinary neighborhood suggests that bulimia occurs in any community regardless of its socioeconomic level. In the same chapter, Andrea Maturana’s “Verde en el borde” (Green on the Rim, 1993), about the relationship between a bulimic woman and her boyfriend, shows the devastating effects that this eating disorder has not only on the