The girl who ate Kalamazoo

the long version

It’s been seven years since Audrey Mapes finished consuming Kalamazoo, Michigan. Numerous books have postulated the impact of this event on the national psyche, but the private world of the doomed girl and her reclusive family has remained shrouded in mystery. Until now. In the vein of such contemporaries as John Irving and Katherine Dunn, Darrin Doyle has a flare for writing about family dysfunction. With a unique blend of realism and fantasy, THE GIRL WHO ATE KALAMAZOO is the moving story of the hauntingly beautiful Audrey Mapes - world’s most gifted “eatist” - the girl who ate Kalamazoo. With vivid, acerbic wit, Doyle details a life of disordered eating, depression, and tasteless Catholic jokes through the character of Audrey’s sister, McKenna Mapes. After years of public and private wondering and questioning, at long last we step through the front door of that famous house on Moriarty Street and witness firsthand the making of an American dream and an American nightmare. Through McKenna’s eyes, we see the real tragedy of the Mapes story is not the destruction of a city, but rather, the quiet disintegration of a family who just didn't quite know how to love. THE GIRL WHO ATE KALAMAZOO is a darkly comic yet moving and charmingly quirky novel that paints a captivating portrait of the all American family, however dysfunctional they may be.