Books : Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.852630092
EAN: 9780060187392
ISBN: 0060187395
Label: HarperCollins
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: January 14, 1998
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: December 29, 1997
Sales Rank: 701290
Studio: HarperCollins
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of five, she returned from a ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed and cried -- because she thought she was fat. By age nine, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school while watching The Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve.
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 sustained both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs and, ultimately, any sense of what it meant to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she re-creates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family and cultural causes that underlie eating disorders.
Hornbacher's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a news service in Washington, DC, she is in the grip of a such a horrifying bout with anorexia that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Hornbacher's body becomes a battlefield: the death instinct with the drive to live, mind and body locked in mortal combat.
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. A landmark book from a 23-year-old writer of virtuoso prose, Wasted takes us inside the experience of anorexia and bulimia in a way that no one else has ever done.
Amazon.com Review:
"I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker," Marya Hornbacher writes. "I, as many young women do, honest-to-God believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, suddenly I would be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten." Hornbacher describes in shocking detail her lifelong quest to starve herself to death, to force her short, athletic body to fade away. She remembers telling a friend, at age 4, that she was on a diet. Her bizarre tale includes not only the usual puking and starving, but also being confined to mental hospitals and growing fur (a phenomenon called lanugo, which nature imposes to keep a body from freezing to death during periods of famine).
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
honest, blunt, and insightful. As others have pointed out, it may not aid in the recovery of an eating disorder. However, I do not believe that it romanticizes eating disorders in such a way that it makes them seem more glamorous than they really are. I believe that any romantic thoughts expressed in the book are thoughts that the author, as well as other eating disordered people, have experienced, however distorted they may be. In other words, while for most people it won't inspire recovery, it will not prevent it, because they are most probably already familiar with the feelings that she expresses.
I believe that this book will be most valuable to the person trying to understand the thought process behind eating disorders, more specifically family and friends of those who suffer from them. It is extremely candid and expressive, the literary style very reflective of the overall experience of having an eating disorder. If nothing else, since there are so many skeptics of this book's ability to aid in any sort of recovery process, this book should be respected as an articulate memoir and overall well-written piece of literature.
Rating: -
Never one to starve myself to bend the needle on the scale, I've always been curious about the mentality of women who do feel the need for food deprivation in order to achieve the body they think they should have. I even knew a potential bulimic in high school and never understood how she could make herself throw up in order to stay skinny, not to mention feeling appalled by the concept. I'm able to say now after reading this memoir that the notion of eating disorders has been extensively elucidated for me while increasing my dismayed response to such behavior.
Nominated in 1998 for the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction, "Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia" is at times shocking, difficult to digest (in more ways than one, pardon the pun) and yet strangely edifying, allowing the reader a peek inside the driving forces behind women with eating disorders. Author Marya Hornbacher cracks the door wide open on a madness few understand, a neurosis that rationalizes time and again the abnormal act of starvation.
"Wasted" follows Hornbacher's early childhood in California all the way to her college years in Minnesota and Washington D.C., chronicling in painstaking detail her burgeoning eating disorder. A bulimic at only nine years old, Marya perpetuated the vicious cycle of bingeing and purging for seven years, escalating to anorexia at 15 when she began attending Interlochen, a prestigious boarding school. Her poor self-image and intense scrutiny of ... Read More
Rating: -
I liked this book a lot and not 'cause I related to Marya. I didn't. Not in the beginning, anyway. In fact, I don't even recall my life very much at 7 years old; I couldn't really picture someone that young having and ED. I'm not implying she might have been dishonest, but it just made me realize that I wasn't so self-aware at that age, of my own image.
The book is catchy. It's the kind of book where you want to know what happens next. It's the kind of book you want to know how it ends. Though, it *could* be triggering -- as a matter of fact, especially when she says, at the end, that she relapsed following the narration of the events. However, it's honest. An ED is not something that you can shake off by going to the doctor and popping in some pills or being hospitalized for a period of time. It's a life-long battle. And you must fight it every day, within yourself.
Rating: -
This book is the definition of disturbing....but it may bring "skinny" into a better perspective for you. The media should read this & then re-evaluate what kind of skinny is appropriate for women...
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this book is beautifully written. marya hornbacher is a phenomenal writer, and i have read this book at least 5 times over, never growing tired of her vivid descriptions of an uphill battle with an eating disorder. i've read all 3 of hornbacher's books (all of which i finished in approximately 3-4 days, because i could NOT put them down), and truly look forward to any further books/memoirs she has in the works, as i know they will be equally brilliant.
this book is life changing...it's heart breaking...it's beautiful...it's scarring...it's amazing.
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