Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher

20 reviews

mair_ad's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder, Mental illness, and Vomit

amandaquotidianbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

Hornbacher’s writing style absolutely made me love this book. She blends information about EDs,  her memories and literary references beautifully. It has strong dark academia vibes. I took my time reading it so I could luxuriate in the experience. I immediately picked up Madness, her other memoir. The only reason this isn’t a five star is the incredibly dark topic.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Suicidal thoughts, and Vomit

Moderate: Sexual content and Toxic relationship

nicnevin's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Heartbreaking and raw, it throws out any prenotions of what an eating disorder is. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Infertility, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Dementia, Medical trauma, Car accident, Suicide attempt, Acephobia/Arophobia, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

kpetroski's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder

palladium_xerox's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

4.75

If you or someone you know are struggling with an eating disorder or addiction in general, give this memoir a read. It’s heart wrenching and incredibly real; the author doesn’t censor herself or try to justify her actions but instead just tells the audience about her life. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Self harm, Sexual content, Abortion, and Pregnancy

Minor: Toxic friendship and Classism

tuesdayangel's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Eating disorder, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, and Vomit

Moderate: Miscarriage, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Medical content

valancysnaith's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

I will be brutally and totally honest. Much as I love this book, and much as the book is superbly written... it is a book that, in the depths of my own eating disorder, I have used to fuel the fire. In particular, I would read, over and over again, the account of Marya getting down to 52 lbs. And everyone on the ED online communities I frequented knew the exact BMI she was at that weight; I still remember, actually. And so many of us envied her. We knew the risks... we knew the health perils... yet we wanted, so badly, to achieve exactly what she had. To get down to a BMI of 10.2. It was amazing to us. We wanted it so, so badly.

I am in a better place, at least perspective-wise, these days, and I recognize that Marya was not someone to be envied, but an incredibly, direly ill person who was a hair's width away from death. I do not envy her weight or BMI, now. I've been down a similar road -- I've been emaciated, starving, in and out of hospitals -- and I know it isn't fun and games, and it will never give you what you want. 

But this book, for people with active EDs... it's extremely dangerous. Marya says she wrote this memoir with the intention of helping people with eating disorders, but for most of the people I knew who read it around the time I first did, it did not help their eating disorders to get better, but rather helped them to become worse. And it is true that this book is FULL of tips and tricks about purging and losing weight alike. I do not believe that people with active eating disorders should read this book, but of course no one can stop them. And it's very true that at the time of publication, there was no LiveJournal, no social media, none of the things that people now use to create eating disorder communities. So the effects of this book, although I imagine similar even then, were less wide-spread than they are today.

I don't blame Marya, though. Someone offered her a contract to write this specific book, and when you're given your first ever contract to write a novel, it's a very very difficult thing to turn down, especially as her finances were not very good at the time. And I do not think she believed it would do any harm. To any "sane" person, this book is horrific and terrifying. I know this. But to those of us who are stuck in the same disorders that she was stuck in (she has since fully recovered), it makes a lot of sense -- too much sense. And it makes the eating disorder voice even louder and even stronger.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Mental illness, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Vomit

megbomb's review against another edition

challenging dark informative sad tense fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder

chloensmith1's review against another edition

dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder and Self harm

daralexandria's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Eating disorder and Self harm

Moderate: Vomit