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Summary: recovery need not be as bleak and limited as this portrait
Review: Hornbacher's story is written in such a way that anyone with eating issues can find themselves within her struggle. The medical consequences that Hornbacher discribes are enough to make anyone think twice about self-destructive behavior. However, Hornbacher is hardly one to present recovery. Recovery is running for an hour a day on a treadmill then blacking out? Recovery is eating cereal for dinner sometimes on bad days? Don't sell yourself short of Hornbacher's vision of recovery with "just being all right." Genuine freedom from eating disorders can be possible, and Hornbacher does not accurately reflect those who have been afflicted with an eating disorder when she implies that the disease is always something you will act upon on occasion for the rest of your life.
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Summary: Well-written, Quick-moving, Heart-wrenching Story
Review: This is not a book for the weak-kneed. Hornbacher writes with unflinching honesty about, well, the process of slowly and deliberately killing herself. As I was reading the book, I was struck at her mature and articulate style and tone - kept thinking, "this woman is only 23?!" Hornbacher provides keen insight into the mind of a young woman whose entire childhood and young-adult life was shaped by anorexia. I particularly liked her unflinching yet unwhining account of her family's dynamics and their attempts to deal with what was going on with Marya.Keep something 'lite' around to read before you go to sleep - this will induce unease.
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Summary: Excellent, thorough account of eating disorders.
Review: This book reaches to the soul and mind behind the eating disorder. The author does not just tell her story, she explains clearly, the insane thoughts and emotions of an eating disordered person. The reader can fully understand the pain and agony. This book has been truly the most imformative book about eating disorders that I have read so far. I also believe the author is a genius in the art of writing.
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Summary: A very honest book
Review: This book has to be my favorite book now. It was so wonderful and honest. It was a very hard book to read, along the lines of her struggles, yet it only took my 3 days to complete. Marya truely shows how awful an eating disorder can be, more so than any book I've read or movie I've watched on the topic. I would recommend it to anyone, especially those struggling with an eating disorder. It really maks you want to recover.
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Summary: Exactly what I needed. Brutal Honesty.
Review: I am a cynic. I hate pop-psychology books, books that narrow things down to being about one simple issue, or books that profess to have "the cure" or "the answer." This book is none of those! The sheer brutal honesty is compelling and extremely refreshing. Marya's writing is incredibly eloquent. It is like every word is chosen very carefully, and every single one hits the nail on the head. I was so moved by this book that in the middle I was able to get up, fix myself a NORMAL meal, eat it, and keep it down. Only those of you with eating disorders understand how moved that is. I wish there were more books with this effect. This book holds a wisdom so deep, and so from the heart. It does not preach. It made me look at my life, and see how it's almost as if I had the disorder long before the behaviors. I think it is an excellent book for friends and family, to really see inside a sufferer's head. And even with all that, if only for that single meal I kept down, it was well worth it. I CAN do it. Thank you Marya!
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Summary: This was a very difficult book to read!
Review: And I mean that as a compliment. Mayra Hornbacher wrote so openly and honestly about what she was going through in a way that one else has ever tried to about what it is like to live with this. Most books about eating disorders have been writen by those who think that they know what it is all about, but they end up focusing in on the actual behavior, which inadvertantly glamorizes this mess. The behavior is really the tip of the iceberg, the more important and interesting part is what you can not see below the surface. Mayra was able to really show what was going on beneath the surface and what it is like to try and live with this after leaving therapy - that you live with this each day of your life and that you are never miraculously "cured." This book is excellent because it is beautifully written and brutally honest. I hope that everyone who reads this book will walk away with the same feeling that I had - start working through your issues no matter what they are, find something/one to live for, and (most importantly) that you are not alone.
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Summary: Well written and very revealing!
Review: As a current sufferer of bulimia, I understand exactly what the author was trying to convey. this book is a must read for anyone who is or knows anyone suffering from an eating disorder.
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Summary: Interesting lifestyle
Review: Extremely well written. Needed more excitement.
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Summary: Writer Finds Own Lessons in Coping with Agony
Review: This wrenchingly self-revealing eating-disorders narrative examines how compulsive destructiveness to body and mind may be spurred by an obscure self-hatred and a haze of self-alienation. Also operating for Marya Hornbacher was a frightening existential curiosity, a desire to test her limits. Recounting many painful events, she is straightforward and unsentimental, yet often evokes pathos by the fascinating, terrifying inner logic of her eating-disordered behavior. Another asset of this memoir is its sense of balance: exploring in detail both the subtle family and cultural messages that discourage self-acceptance and the personal responsibility of the individual for her response. Ultimately, two facets of Hornbacher's experience stayed with me most: first, the way in which she increasingly worked to discard the roles she had long ago adopted to control her pain and anxiety. She has claimed lessons from reflecting on her history and is building the capacity to interpret the world independently, through categories of value that reflect her own perceptions. She makes clear that such learning is a grueling, largely solitary process. Second, I am struck by how her growth was wrought from a condition that, for the author at least, had become a viscerally ingrained mode of being felt to be as central to surviving as breathing, and to be a crux of her sense of identity. This description of painful dependency is an achievement of visibility, because one just doesn't tend to realize a person's desperation could attain such intensity, especially if she is also high-functioning in some ways. Furthermore, to conceive of eating disorders as having the addictive component Hornbacher describes hints at the difficulty involved in progressively working one's way out of its grasp.
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Summary: This books speaks the completely unglamorous truth.
Review: As a recovering anorexic/bulimic/compulsive overeater, I must say this book is uncanny. This woman's struggles are shocking, provocative, informative, and frighteningly familiar. The author does not leave us with words of wisdom, or a happy ending, but bare and ambiguous truth--no one can say how the story of her struggle or anyone else's will end. The details of her life are stated not to blame or preach, but to offer some sort of spiritual visualization that even the farthest removed nay-sayer must believe and validate. Truly a haunting experience.
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