Marya Hornbacher

This was recommended in the goodreads review section of a fiction book that mocked people with eating disorders and was praised by Roxane Gay. Many people recovering from eating disorders understandably were deeply offended, and one of them recommended this memoir instead. Memoirs aren't my thing, and me giving three stars is common. Five stars for this actual content. Three stars for the way it was edited. The book could have been a hundred pages shorter, or even more, and lost nothing. The style took some getting used to. It switched back and forth between past and present without warning. It switched between first and -second- person -within the same paragraph- so often that I came to expect it. At first, I had a hard time interpreting whether she used "you" royally to confer a sense of immediacy or intimacy, or if it was herself in second person trying to distance herself from her body and choices around it in a way that's consistent with her state. Often, it was both. This is both a memoir and a social commentary, and the two are weaved together so tightly that it can be...a lot at times.

Hornbacher is bipolar. Someone asked if I'd read her memoir about it, and I said no. I have the same thing. I don't need to read about it. I've been stable on medication for awhile, but am fully aware of what I'm like off of it. This is a book about eating disorders and has a few pages dedicated to treatment. It's also inseparable from her experiences with bipolar disorder, such to the point that sometimes I felt like I -was- reading a memoir about bipolar disorder before she was medicated. But eating disorders; I don't have one that I know of. So I read this. I learned a lot. I'm glad Hornbacher was so willing to share so much of her life, especially with all the gritty details. I've never seen a fiction book handle this topic with such respect nor gravity, and I wish those authors would read this memoir first. Highly, highly recommended.… (altro)

This was an incredibly difficult book to read.

On the surface, that seems obvious. Reading the experience of a woman living with bulima, anorexia, and a plethora of other mental health issues, is going to be a difficult read. But that's not what I mean.

Hornbacher wrote this memior at age 23. She ends the book (I did not read the modern reprint with her "updated" ending) rather solemnly, admitting that she is not cured, there is no answer, and essentially she cannot give an ending. She wrote this only 4 years after her nearth-death experience, and only 3 years after her suicide attempt. This memoir was written by someone still deeply in the grip of the things that had led her to that point in her life.

So the uncomfortableness comes from the outsiders perspective. She insists, over and again, that she had a "normal", "good" childhood and that her eating disorder just appeared out of the blue from no where.

She then goes on to detail a childhood filled with emotional trauma, surrounded by family members with mental health and food issues of their own, and as the reader we find ourselves frustratingly yelling, "it's there! it's all there! I can see it happening to you as you're writing it but you cannot see it!" Near the end of the book she still refers to her family has relatively normal, just "messy". It feels like a kick in the gut.

I have not read Hornbacher's other books. I feel almost honor-bound to do so now, to not always have my memory of this author entrenched in her view of herself at 23-years-old. None of us deserve that.… (altro)

I think the author says it best.

"It's taken me exactly two months to leave my husband, find a new playmate and move across the country to my brand-new life."

"I still haven't made the connection between my drinking and the maniacal swings of my mood. I don't see the chaos around me as moods. I see it as a chaotic life that I'm simply too weak to manage well. And, for that matter, I more than welcome the highs, and the fact that the alcohol makes them even higher. And the lows, the screaming fits that morph into deep despair and back up again, the terrifying flights of fantasy, the inability to control my impulses? That's all just me being my usual fucked up self. I think the alcohol is helping me to manage my life."

Eventually her life comes full circle to a place where she is more accepting of her condition and its ramifications.… (altro)