16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Biting Anorexia - A Book Review, September 3, 2009
This review is from: Biting Anorexia: A Firsthand Account of an Internal War (Paperback)
This book is an exceptional, ongoing memoir of a woman who has dealt with eating disorders, depression, and other significant cognitive issues most of her life. This is not a book on "How to Overcome Your Eating Disorders," and this is not a narrative suggesting the disorder has been completely remedied in the author and is now only being considered in the past tense. Ms. Howard-Taylor suggests she expects to deal with her complex issues for the foreseeable future and she is in recovery rather than recovered.
For anyone looking for a feel-good religious-style transformation out of eating disorder issues, this is not the book for you. However, if you feel you are in a space where you'd like to read a frank and articulate narrative about the perceptions and actions of someone who has actively struggled with eating disorders, this is an extraordinarily good book.
A word of caution: I highly recommend this book for anyone who has dealt with or is dealing with someone else in their life with eating disorders. I also highly recommend this book to professionals who are counseling clients with eating disorders. However, this book is so candid, and it deals so intimately with day to day eating disorder considerations and experiences, that I would strongly encourage anyone who is personally dealing with eating disorders to read this book with notice and consent of the professional counselors with whom they are working.
The intent of this memoir is not to explain the root causes of eating disorders. The author suggests there are no singular and dominant sources that lead to eating disorders.
The book helps us understand how people with eating disorders are often also brilliant and talented. Anyone who stereotypically thinks a person with an eating disorder is somehow stupid or lacking education should have many of those myths dispelled by reading this book. Ms. Howard-Taylor is a more clear, educated, counseled, and organized writer than most people twice her age.
Ms. Howard-Taylor regularly has made the decisions TO WRITE out her internal conflicts. And that process of writing is a valuable expression and reference tool, a saving force for herself and others who struggle with similar internal issues.
I have less fear for people who are regularly writing and expressing their dramatic and life-threatening internal dialogues than I fear for people who are comparatively silent toward themselves and others on those issues. When people stop dialoguing and struggling, that concerns me much more. Ms. Howard-Taylor's life, her actions and her book champion the concept that expressing uncommon and "unacceptable" internal battles may be part of good therapeutic processes.
This is not a "Memoir of Blame" or a "Memoir of How I Was Mistreated in My Childhood." This is a memoir of someone actively and daily expressing their "internal war" involving core issues of self-perceptions, self-definitions, and survival.
This book ends with some summarizing observations, but it does not end with singular or simple solutions. The author gives the honest impression that her issues will stay with her and will likely be patterns she will continue to confront.
I have personally been intimately involved with people with eating disorders, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Depression and eating disorders are powerful illnesses that can derail the best and brightest among us.
Reading Ms. Howard-Taylor's book, I could hear the rushed and fast inner voices of which I am already familiar. I have recorded similar memories in my permanent collection. This is a beautiful memoir that artfully illustrates a representative mindset that people, who have dealt with loved ones with eating disorders, will likely be familiar. There is as much to read in between the lines of this quality writing as there is to glean from the text itself.
I want to emphasize that this book review does not touch on a plethora of the diverse topics in the book. By only reading this review, you will not have a summarizing sense of a tremendous amount of the engaging personal correspondence and narratives ventured in the book.
If, as mentioned in the movie "Shadowlands," it is true "We read to know we are not alone," then many people with these related issues should find some solace and companionship in reading this memoir.
The beauty of the book is in the expression of the honest doubts as much as it is in the expression of possible solutions. If you personally struggle with these issues, I recommend reading it in coordination and with the consent of your therapists.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brief but intimate insight into the illness...more of a literary masterpiece than memoir, December 27, 2009
This review is from: Biting Anorexia: A Firsthand Account of an Internal War (Paperback)
I have read over 20 Eating Disorder memoirs and this is probably my favourite one. However it is probably my most favourite for the author's witty and intelligent writing style which I found incredibly engaging. The author was young when she wrote this...only 19..yet she has written a book that shows considerable maturity and literary talent. Not only that, but she's incredibly interesting and unique, and has an amazing ability to write in the most illuminating and poignant way.
Her descriptions and way of explaining her illness and the nature of anorexia are spot-on, and she does an incredible job of being entertaining while giving her account.
I found it delved less into the intricate details of having an eating disorder than other books, and instead, gave a few important and basic recounts. Yet these were described with such insight and candour, that they herald the quality of the book.
This book is unique in it's field, with great insight and witty, intelligent dialogue. It demonstrates how some people can be caught for only a relatively short period of time with this illness (I think the author was very lucky in her experience), and go on to become amazing scholars and vibrant people who truly impact upon the world.
Which is what the author is: A vibrant, unique soul, - incredibly passionate and intelligent.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AMAZING, November 6, 2011
This review is from: Biting Anorexia: A Firsthand Account of an Internal War (Paperback)
I went to the same school as this young woman, and on the final celebration of school she read an amazing speech about the struggles she had overcome, this woman is amazing and her novel was a beautifully written account of a terrible disease. This novel was addictive, once you started you can not put it down, i have noting but praises for this novel.It was a beautiful story with a beautiful soul to it.
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