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Summary
Summary
Still very small at fifteen, Lydia becomes self-conscious about her size and develops an obsession with growing, until she meets Michelle, who has anorexia nervosa and wants only to be smaller.
Summary
Religious life in Canada has changed dramatically in recent decades due to secularization and the population shifts resulting from urbanization and immigration. New varieties of pluralism have emerged, entailing massive changes in a culture once assumed to be almost uniformly Christian. God's Plenty examines the religious landscape of Kingston, Ontario, in the twenty-first century. The rich religious life of Kingston -- a mid-sized city with a strong sense of its history and its status as a university town -- is revealed in a narrative that integrates material from sociological and historical studies, websites, interviews, religious and literary scholarship, and personal experience. In Kingston, as in every Canadian city, downtown parishes and congregations have dwindled, disappeared, or moved to the suburbs. Attendance at mainline churches -- and their political authority -- has declined. Ethnic diversity has increased within Christian churches, while religious communities beyond Christianity and Judaism have grown. Faith groups have split along liberal and conservative lines, and the number of those claiming to have no religion -- or to be spiritual but not religious -- has increased. Yet amidst all this, religion continues to be evident in institutions and public life and important to the lives of many Canadians. God's Plenty , a ground-breaking contribution to the study of religion in Canada and a model for future community-based research, is the first overview of the religious topography of a Canadian city, telling the story of various faith communities and adding to the study of religious diversity and multiculturalism.
Reviews (4)
Kirkus Review
When her father died some years back, ""there were so many consoling remarks"" about his smallness that little Lydia Bitte became fearfully obsessed about her own diminutive stature. Even now, pretty and bright at 15, Lydia feels panicked, sensitive about her smallness. Though she's a rock of stability at home, more competent than her mother or younger sister, she's withdrawn at school--depressed by her sometime boyfriend (a pawing rock 'n' roller who calls her ""Littlebit""), preferring to spend time either drawing or working in the dress shop of bouncy family friend Claudine. Then, however, Claudine's niece Michelle--who needs a place away from her parents--comes to stay with the Bittes while going for periodic medical treatments: a severe sufferer of anorexia nervosa, Michelle's been in and out of hospitals, a nearly hopeless case. At first, the new houseguest stays strictly in her room, while Lydia and the rest recoil in ill-disguised horror. But soon Michelle starts realizing that she's found herself a laissez-faire, sloppy household very different from her parents'; she and Lydia begin talking, sharing an interest in art--as well as a sort of cosmic feeling about size. Then, in a charmingly handled bit of improvised, unplanned therapy, Lydia starts gaining weight (partly in response to Michelle's gauntness)--so Michelle agrees to try to gain a little weight herself. . . if it will help her new friend from getting fat. And thus it goes through the next few months, with Michelle and Lydia both getting a little better, drawing on their shared half-understanding of the parallel sources of their anxieties. (Michelle's involve her loathed father, her mother's lost opportunities; Lydia's still reach back to her dead father.) First-novelist Willey avoids pat, quick solutions here--which means a fairly limp, halfheartedly cheerful, open-ended fadeout. But everywhere else the low-key approach pays off, brightening up (but not sugar-coating) the somewhat clinical material--with engaging supporting players, unstagily neat dialogue, and a plausible sense of teenage depression's tolerable ups and downs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 7-10. Arly's obsession with a handsome, older boy becomes complicated when she makes friends with a demanding and eccentric new girl in town.
Kirkus Review
When her father died some years back, ""there were so many consoling remarks"" about his smallness that little Lydia Bitte became fearfully obsessed about her own diminutive stature. Even now, pretty and bright at 15, Lydia feels panicked, sensitive about her smallness. Though she's a rock of stability at home, more competent than her mother or younger sister, she's withdrawn at school--depressed by her sometime boyfriend (a pawing rock 'n' roller who calls her ""Littlebit""), preferring to spend time either drawing or working in the dress shop of bouncy family friend Claudine. Then, however, Claudine's niece Michelle--who needs a place away from her parents--comes to stay with the Bittes while going for periodic medical treatments: a severe sufferer of anorexia nervosa, Michelle's been in and out of hospitals, a nearly hopeless case. At first, the new houseguest stays strictly in her room, while Lydia and the rest recoil in ill-disguised horror. But soon Michelle starts realizing that she's found herself a laissez-faire, sloppy household very different from her parents'; she and Lydia begin talking, sharing an interest in art--as well as a sort of cosmic feeling about size. Then, in a charmingly handled bit of improvised, unplanned therapy, Lydia starts gaining weight (partly in response to Michelle's gauntness)--so Michelle agrees to try to gain a little weight herself. . . if it will help her new friend from getting fat. And thus it goes through the next few months, with Michelle and Lydia both getting a little better, drawing on their shared half-understanding of the parallel sources of their anxieties. (Michelle's involve her loathed father, her mother's lost opportunities; Lydia's still reach back to her dead father.) First-novelist Willey avoids pat, quick solutions here--which means a fairly limp, halfheartedly cheerful, open-ended fadeout. But everywhere else the low-key approach pays off, brightening up (but not sugar-coating) the somewhat clinical material--with engaging supporting players, unstagily neat dialogue, and a plausible sense of teenage depression's tolerable ups and downs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 7-10. Arly's obsession with a handsome, older boy becomes complicated when she makes friends with a demanding and eccentric new girl in town.