Customer Reviews

Bitter Ice: A Memoir of Love, Food, and Obsession

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Bitter Ice is compelling for those of us who have wondered to the point of agonizing about why smart and successful women stay in relationships destructive to themselves and their children. Barbara Lawrence details the evolution of the individuals in this particular relationship and the dynamics of the relationship itself. Her chronicle reminds me of a Stephen King horror story where pretty normal people and situations begin, almost imperceptively, to go awry. By the time things have become completely warped and unacceptable to the observer, the participants themselves have bought into their lives through a combination of denial, rationalization and self doubt and are living in a way they think of as "normal". Coming from a family with an alcoholic parent, I think it is courageous and important that the author shed light for all of us by sharing very personal information. All of us in situations similar to hers learn first and foremost to keep secrets. And keeping those secrets ultimately leads to our own emotional destruction. This story is sad and tragic for the author's whole family including the father. To me, the saddest part was when the author looked at photographs of her absent children and asked herself why she has photographs of those she loves instead of having them. As children, our inclination is to blame our parents for what is wrong in our lives. This book has helped me to better understand them, and in the case of the living, have hope for them. And ultimately, to forgive them. Only then can we begin to build healthy and happy lives for ourselves instead of becoming casualties of our upbringing. For this family, I hope that through telling the secrets and all that implies, they can each finally find personal happiness and a better life.

Many parts of Bitter Ice were difficult for me to read. This was the first book, of the many that I have read on eating disorders, that made me realize what damage this obsessive behavior does to the family members of the sufferer. I battled anorexia for most of high school and college. While basically "cured," the intense selfishness of my disorder never allowed me to see what pain I brought to my family and friends. Only in reading Barbara Kent Lawrence's honest account do I now understand what my own family was facing. This book has brought me a few steps closer to my own recovery.

In Bitter Ice Barbara Kent Lawrence takes us into a life only those of us with relatives who suffer from eating disorders can imagine. Other readers may be incredulous watching as her husband "Tom" deteriorates, withering from a robust athlete to a dry husk of a man, a man so consumed by his illness that he can hardly relate to anything in the world around him. But we know that is the power and tragedy of eating disorders. Bitter Ice is a beautiful and brave book that describes a slow descent into hell from which Lawrence retrieves herself with the help of her friends and family. Bitter Ice shows us the complexity of relationships patterned by culture and colored by context, but still the responsibility of each of us as individuals. And finally, Bitter Ice shows us that eating disorders are NOT "for women only." Over a million men suffer from ED in this country alone, and 40% of college students with bulimia are men. Still, too many people still think, as Tom's psychiatrist did, "Oh, men can't be anorexic, that's a woman's disease." This is a book for anyone who has ever been affected by obsessive or co-dependent behavior, or by anyone who cares about. In short, ,most of us will find ourselves in Bitter Ice.

It is rare to find a book that is so affecting. At times, I was physically, as well as emotionally, impacted by the imagery. A beautifully crafted story of love, dependency and self-redemption.

Despite what the book jacket would have you believe this book has much less to say about anorexia and it's impact and much more to say about the fractured state of marriages for upper class baby boomers.Barbara Kent Lawrence reveals far more about her own unresolved guilt at having been raised in economic privilege and surrounded by political conservatism as she grew up in the era of civil rights, anti-war protests and the "sexual revolution".Her complaints about having been raised in the belly of the Washingtonian aristocratic elite and yet, the injustice of her not getting her fair share in the will left this reader somewhat unsympathetic to her self-endowed victim status.Her husband undoubtedly suffers throughout the memoir with a crippling mental illness but we learn little about it other than how painfully embarassing it was for her to be with him. The author gives scant lip service to her complicity in this family drama never quite owning up to her martyr-like co-dependency. This memoir is a well-crafted rant (resulting from a life time of suppressed rage) masquerading as a compassionate and sensitive portrayal of mental illness and familial dysfunction.

Barbara Lawrence's "Bitter Ice" was a stunning read for me on several levels. First there is the story. Barbara begins describing herself as a very bright (but perhaps a bit neglected) socially well counneced young woman and tells of her journey though college and into what appeared to be a satisfying and appropriate marriage. She continues her tale describing life as partner to an increasingly ill man and her private process of recognizing and finding a response to her horrible circumstances. Second, within this very personal story I found exraordinary information. There is rich descrption of anorexia in adult men and the diffculties identifying it; there is Barbara's description of what she had to tackle in order to understand what was happening to her husband; there is eqully rich description of the impact of anorexia on immediate family and those further removed. Finally, readers should know that this is a very beautifully crafted book. The story is carefully told, the writing is clear. Barbara enables the reader to go right to the heart of her deeply moving and important book. I highly recommend it.

Barbara Kent Lawrence is both author and main character in this book. It is a story of her life with a severely anorexic husband. Her husband, Tom, is very ill indeed, and throughout the book I could not help but feel not only sorry for him, but anger at her. Her naivete and lack of compassion, I feel, contributed greatly to the escalation of his illness. I could not help but wonder if she would have been so ignorant if her husband had cancer or diabetes or a fatal brain tumor. Tom needed help desperately, and Ms. Lawrence chose instead to focus on her own needs during his troubled times. She shows an astounding ignorance in this day and age of the disease, of Raynaud's disease, which Tom claims he has, and of it's implications. Not surprisingly, her husband improves once she leaves him. Her selfishness seems unbounded. At Tom's very worst times is when she thinks of leaving him. There is no question her life was difficult living with this man, but there is also no question that Tom had a serious, life threatening, chemical imbalance that could have been helped a great deal with her support. I wonder what her purpose was in writing her memoirs. If it was to gain sympathy for her ordeal, she should think again. I admire Tom much more, and wish him a life with someone who will make an attempt to understand and secure help for him when he needs it. In all fairness I could not base my rating on how I feel about the subject matter. Others may feel very differently. So I gave the book four stars for the very fact that it IS thought provoking and well written. I just hope that Ms. Lawrence does not applaud herself too much.

Bitter Ice accompanied me to Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I just returned today and have finished reading this incredible book. Amazingly written! In the most positive way, the author really plumbs her soul. Much to her credit, she makes readers recognize how vulnerable we all are in relationships as our own worry of self-perception overtakes our common sense. I think each and every one of us has been guilty of this behavior. How brave of her to share her experience so deeply. She presents the behaviors that existed but were so much easier to ignore or bury, perhaps in the denial that all of us would embrace under similar circumstances. I believe this message must be shared in the hopes that if only one individual receives the wake up call, it would be well worth the mission.

This book is an extraordinary text about a woman who possesses great strength. Through the evolution of her marriage, Barbara takes us through the journey of her thinking process as she struggles to deal with the psychological damage that her husband's illness forces on all who knew him. I couldn't put it down!

Although it was a fascinating story, this was a hard book to read. It was hard to be sympathetic to the characters -- Barbara because of her incessent whinning about how tough her life with a wealthy family was and how unfair that she didn't have a trust fund like her siblings, and him because he had absolutely no redeeming qualities. There is nothings likable about Tom, and the reader isn't cheering for his recovery. He is obviously mentally ill and utterly self-involved from the very beginning, and why she doesn't recognize this is puzzling. So is the fact that she stays with this lunatic for *25 years*. She doesn't love him, she doesn't need him, he's ruining her life... but still she stays. She never confronts the fact that she's co-dependant, and it leaves with reader with the idea that she stuck around because living with a sick, twisted man made for fascinating material. I'm not convinced that his problem was anorexia -- he had obvious mental and social problems before he started starving himself, and I felt that the anorexia was simply another syndrome of whatever was wrong with him. That a bright, successful, wealthy woman would stay with someone like him and tolerate his gross, controlling behavior left me shaking my head. Why Barbara, why?