Head Full, Stomach Empty
By: Nina Sankovitch
Tags: Novels, Lawyers, New York City

Swallow by Tonya Plank is an entertaining and engrossing read about an ambitious young lawyer in New York City, with all the necessary stuff about long hours, extreme pressure, and cut throat competition, along with the attendant splurges of materialistic gorging that a hard-working young lawyer feels she deserves (especially as the novel is set in go-go economic orgy that existed prior to 9/11). But it is also a moving exploration of a condition known as Globus Hystericus, in which an internally overwrought patient feels as if something is always in the way of food and drink going down her throat, and at times, of words coming out. In other words, the person is literally choking on psychological issues.

Recent law school graduate Sophie Hegel cannot swallow because her whole life she’s been surrounded by or surrounded herself with controlling, domineering and judgmental men (and a few competitive, sometimes nasty, women). She suffers from extreme lack of self-confidence, despite having gone to Yale Law School, doing very well there, and now scoring a prestigious public interest fellowship at the Public Defender’s Office. When the ball-in-the-throat thing starts (she calls it “FB” for fist ball, which is really confusing, given that FB now stands for one thing and that is Facebook but anyway, I’m just quibbling), Sophie loses the ability to eat and enjoy food, and just when she needs it most, she finds herself losing her voice, like in court or in the middle of an argument with fiance Stephen RichMan/Law Partner/WASP.

But it’s not all bad having Globus Hystericus. Sophie loses tons of weight and becomes a size 0, achieving model status and a new outlook on herself. Pity that she is hungry all the time, faints in court, and still suffers from chronic lack of confidence. Her habit of getting whiny when challenged (her words, not mine), started to get real annoying but I liked dear skinny old Sophie anyway. Her heart is in the right place, as a lawyer for those who have no one else to turn to and her efforts to help her clients are sincere. Sophie works hard, as she has worked hard her entire life, but she just cannot get away from feeling that she comes from white trash (i.e., Arizona — again, her words, not mine) and that she will never fit in to the sophisticated, hyper-educated, and uber-ambitious New York legal world. But of course you will, honey — the question is WHY DO YOU WANT TO? Sophie has a lot to figure out for herself and by the end of the novel she is well on the way to growing up and growing out of Globus Hystericus.

I do worry that this novel will do more to compound female body image problems than illuminate them. Sophie keeps insisting she is not anorexic and yet she starts to love being really really really skinny. All of the female characters are described by their physical characteristics, including weight and height, and weight is an indication of both class and level of attractiveness, but the only man described in glowing physical terms is a male stripper; he is as objectified as the females. There is one fat and drunk creepy lawyer guy: fat is equated with low-class behavior by Sophie, as she sees both her mother and her sister as decidedly low-class and chronically overweight. At the end of the novel, one of Sophie’s best friends has lost ten pounds following Sophie’s diet “trick” of only eating teeny tiny bites and eating really really slowly. Sophie says she looks “amazing.” And you can too: is there a diet book in the works?

Nevertheless, I had a great time reading this book, it held me from start to finish, through high and low levels of exasperation with Sophie and annoyance with her friends and irritation with the judges before whom she must attempt to argue for her clients and disgust with her pretentious fiance, and I was satisfied by the ending. Swallow will be a good read for women who have been first year lawyers or other young professionals — or who would like to be — and will smooth a path down memory lane for those of us who have been there, done that, and are happy to have moved on.