Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Ratings8
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.9
Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustains both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." By the time she is in college, Hornbacher is in the grip of a bout with anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she re-created the experience and illuminated that tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders. Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to the darker side of reality, and her decision to find her way back--on her own terms.
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Reviews with the most likes.
I did not enjoy the writing style of this book. I felt that there was a lot of side-tracking, repetitiveness and unnecessarily detailed descriptions (no need to describe a bedside glass of water as lukewarm - twice - everybody's familiar with the concept of room temperature water).
The pace of the narrative was at times numbingly slow, at times chaotic. Countless cliffhangers felt annoying: “that's when I went crazy” and then pages later “that's when I went very crazy”.
Overall I found the story very interesting, but it could've been delivered much more condensed, and instead I could've read more about recovery.
