First, a quote from the novel under review. The context: it is a flashback scene of the behaviour of a character at a birthday celebration for her aged mother. She is confessing her bulimia to a crowded room:
‘I make myself sick! I vomit! I vomit! I vomit! I lock myself in the lavatory while you’re all stuffing your faces and I put my fingers down my throat! I vomit! I vomit! I vomit!’ she had cried aloud, as she waved her long, prehensile hands in the air.
We shall skate over the use of the word ‘prehensile’ to describe hands, which are all, unless deformed, prehensile anyway, and concentrate on the character’s speech. Somewhat histrionic, would you say? A little bit unlikely? We all know bulimics, but in the vast majority of cases we do so unknowingly, for it is a condition that is suffered in shame and silence.
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