Wasted: A Memoir Of Anorexia And Bulimia (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
Edited to add disclaimer. PLEASE err on the side of extreme caution if you are recovering from ED or were planning to share this book with a young person who may be in a vulnerable position. As someone who has struggled from an ED myself, I can say that this book contains many things that could trigger you. It also contains graphic detail of how to hide food, how to get rid of food, how to trick people, etc. Basic Summary: Well, I think the title sort of covers it. It's a memoir of the author's hellish descent into the dark world of Anorexia and Bulimia. The Pros: I think this is an important book, a book that really needed to be written and put in the hands of everyone. If I thought he would understand, I would hand this off to my boyfriend and tell him that every girl healthy or not has felt similar to Marya in their lives, in their judgments of themselves, their food, etc. Not many to her extent, but I would say this book can strike a chord with just about all women to some degree. I admire her forthrightness, her bluntness and her bravery for writing this book. I, especially, think the last 20 pages of her book are very powerful. Just for their striking honesty and the light they shed on the after math of a life ravaged by eating disorders, often silently. By rule, I almost never give 5-star ratings to even my favorite books, but, I had to pull one out for this book.The Cons: She is not a natural writer, in my opinion. If Lynne Truss (author of grammar book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation) were to see this book I fear she would fall into cardiac arrest. It's an abomination on the English language. She has a Thing About seemingly Random Capitalization and abundant "use" of "quotations" that are arbitrary. Sometimes in the middle of! a sentence she will use an exclamation point where I think italics might have done the trick. She has footnotes which are, at times, used just fine and mark a specific article/study/author/etc. Other times, as I just read, the footnote is nearly half a page long and just seems like she should have included it in regular print as a part of her story. (As, the footnotes are generally her elaborating on a subject. Which, in a memoir, does not usually warrant a long footnote but rather a new paragraph instead). As you see, these are technical notes and nitpicks. I have no qualms about her subject or story.Memorable Quotations:1) "I hold my breath and shut my eyes when I pull on a pair [of jeans] in the dressing room, afraid they will now, as then, get stuck at my hips and there i will stand, absurd, staring at the excess of hips that should, if I were a good person, be "slim". "2) "Bear in mind, people with eating disorders tend to be both competitive and intelligent. We are incredibly perfectionistic. We often excel in school, athletics, artistic pursuits. We also tend to quit without warning. Refuse to go to school, drop out, quit jobs, leave lovers, move, lose all our money. We get sick of being impressive. Rather, we tire of having to seem impressive. As a rule, most of never really believed we were any good in the first place."3) "I was really annoyed when told I was going to die and rather petulantly went, Well fuck you then I won't". - After being told she would only have a week left to live, at 52 pounds.
I read this the other day and could . not . put . it . down. I was sucked into it's nasty, vortex of destruction from the very first page. Having also just finished reading 'Madness', I can honestly say that my brain feels like tender, pulsating, minced meat right now. I have been on a Hornbacher bender and it feels quite like the time I dealt with alcohol poisoning and an acid come-down all in one evening. This shit is painful to read. And I'm stunned to think that I started reading with caution; having had a very long history with eating disorders, and fucked up body-image: I read reviews that said that this book may trigger, and hell; I'm easily triggered. This book scared the shit out of me. If you find that this book romanticizes, or even attracts you to bulemia or anorexia - you've got a lot more shit wrong with you than you think. I mean, she pooped water and blood. You could see the outline of her teeth through her cheeks. This book is the best thing anyone fantasising about eating disorders could possibly read. If this was put into my hands when I was twelve, besides having nightmares; I would have immediately tucked into a plate of eclairs and never, ever looked back.Reading this book, you step right inside the head of eating disordered thinking. I may never have reached the weights of a lot of anorexic women, I also may never have purged every time that I ate; but I certainly shared the thought processes and behaviours that Hornbacher had. It's a lonely world to be in when you live with these disorders, and this book conveys that. It's self-involved, intense and sickening. It makes me terrified of having children and I must admit, I'm somewhat thankful I don't have a daughter. I'd be so scared of her going through something similar to Hornbacher, or hell: something similar to what I went through and I only ever really had it 'mild'.I think the most frightening thing is how hard it is to reach someone who is suffering with an E.D. Even from a professional, and talented psychiatrist's perspective. E.D patients are wrapped up in so many levels of living hell. She might've come across as smug to some readers, but I didn't see that. I saw her 'cockiness', as being part of the behaviours that eating disordered people seem to usually have. They know they're fucked up, they know that what they do is weird, so they shrug it off with an attitude.This book was impressively written. I was stunned that she was only 23 when it was released (and also surprised when I read 'Madness' and, to me, found it not as well written). Some say that it's too wordy but I like wordy. It helped me feel like I was living inside her head and couldn't step out until I had read it right through to the end. A powerful book. Loved it, although saying that I 'loved' or 'enjoyed' something this horrifying seems too odd a thing to say.
What do You think about Wasted: A Memoir Of Anorexia And Bulimia (2006)?
Ok, I read this a long time ago, but it's still quite possibly the best book on eating disorders -- or even on adolescent mental illness -- that I've ever read. Hornbacher is intelligent, avoids cliches and above all, avoids making herself sound good when she can tell the truth instead. A bracing departure from the "girls can't help starving themselves to death when they see all those models in those glossy magazines" line of thinking about eating disorders -- a line of thinking that treats those suffering from eating disorders as helpless and mindlessly programmable, rather than as complicated human beings.
—Sara
This book will haunt you, I promise you. I still think about it often, though I read it for the first time I think about 4 years ago. The author chronicles her struggle with anorexia and bulimia (which she calls a combined disorder of "bulimarexia") but her language is captivating. It is also apparent that Marya has done her research; as she narrates her own experience she also includes passages from research on anorexia and bulimia to help show how she came to be afflicted and where she fits into the scheme of the disorder. As you read the book you will be by turns morbidly fascinated and repulsed. I often think about her description of herself when she estimates that she weighed somewhere int he 40-50 pound range, right before she admitted: she eats one fat-free muffin at a diner with her parents, and then cries and apologizes sincerely for eating so much. Later in the doctor's office, he tells her she needs to be admitted immediately. She declines at first, saying she has to go meet some friends. He tells her she could have a heart attack walking out of the clinic, and she examines the statement objectively, and almost without emotion, and finally accedes to being admitted. Like I said, it will haunt you.
—Bookwyrm
There is a lot of hate for this book, and I get that. Many find it very triggering. I get that. Many find Hornbacher unsympathetic. I get that, too. I was thirteen when I read it for the first time, and I cried because it felt like she crawled inside my head and scribbled down everything that I felt and had never spoken of. Five years later I still have that copy of the book. It's now been dog-earned and highlighted half to death, and it's on the bookshelf by my bed. Here's the thing: I don't like this book. I find it scary, bleak, depressing, and desolate--and that's why it is so important to me. When I can't get ED to stfu I pick up this book for a bit of a "scared straight" effect. It never fails to remind me why I don't want to be sick anymore, no matter what the disordered part of me is saying. ED is not romantic--it's humiliating, degrading, and alienating. Her gory attention to detail, like hiding her vomit and hoarding food, etc, is ian important reminder. That she never fully recovers, which many find triggering in itself, is for me a grave reminder that the things you do to yourself have consequences: if you use disordered behaviors, you will get trapped in the same miserable sort of half-life and it's a hell of a job to get yourself out again.I recognize that for some this book has been a trigger. But I'm still glad that Hornbacher wrote it.
—Mary Kathleen
