Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)
by Marya Hornbacher

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Marya Hornbacher
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-02-01
ISBN: 0060858796
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial
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Book Reviews of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)

Book Review: Healthy persons need not read
Summary: 1 Stars

Marya's story draws you in, in the same way driving by a recent car crash simultaneously captivates, horrifies and fascinates. However, you drive on feeling sympathy for the victims. No such corollary feeling is derived from reading this pathologically self-absorbed recounting of a young woman's eating disorder. The reader is not allowed to come up for air. Yes, you get to see in excruciating detail the behaviors and consequences of her disorder. If that's entertainment, read on. But step back for a moment and you realize that not once does this woman ever look outside herself for help, remedy, even a different perspective or something greater than herself and you understand that that is the real disease and food or lack thereof is just the delivery system. True, this can be said of any addiction, which then begs the question: Why bother? Unless you want to get down in it and wallow in self-pity and the glories of uncontrolled self-loathing (and who needs more of that?) this book is best avoided. If you already are the self-loathing type this won't inspire you to do it any "better".

Summary of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.


"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).

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