Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.) [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Marya Hornbacher (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 31, 2006 | Series: 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.

Editorial Reviews

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). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA-Eating disorders are frequently written about but rarely with such immediacy and candor. Hornbacher was only 23 years old when she wrote this book so there is no sense of her having distanced herself from the disease or its lingering effects on her. This, combined with her talent for writing, gives readers a real sense of the horror of anorexia and bulimia and their power to dominate an individual's life. The author was bulimic as a fourth grader and anorexic at age 15. She was hospitalized several times and institutionalized once. By 1993 she was attending college and working as a journalist. Her weight had dropped to 52 pounds and doctors in the emergency room gave her only a week to live. She left the hospital, decided she wanted to live, then walked back and signed herself in for treatment. This is not a quick or an easy read. Hornbacher talks about possible causes for the illnesses and describes feeling isolated, being in complete denial, and not wanting to change or fearing change, until she nearly died. Young people will connect with this compelling and authentic story.
Patricia Noonan, Prince William Public Library, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (January 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060858796
• ASIN: B003JTHRBO
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (480 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Special Needs
  • #20 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Addiction & Recovery > Drug Dependency
  • #23 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Eating Disorders

More About the Author

Marya Hornbacher is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated national bestseller Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, a book that remains an intensely read classic, and the acclaimed novel The Center of Winter. An award-winning journalist, she lectures nationally on writing and mental health and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

115 of 122 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wasted but still fighting June 11, 2005

By Kali

Format:Paperback

This is not a sentimental book about a girl who finds out she has an eating disorder and over comes it against all odds. It's not a feel good book in any sense of the word.

The author is aware that she she still is a prisoner to her illness but what she has done is come to terms with it; Anorexia and Bulimia are still millstones around her neck but this book is her way of dealing with this burden.

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher is not an easy book to read, not because the author makes the subject she is talking about complex, rather it is a brutally honest picture into a life governed by eating, puking, starving, eating, starving, puking, a vicious in which there seems to be no escape.

The author looks carefully into her childhood, her teenage years, her adult life, her relationship with her volatile family, her own detachment from herself as a woman in a man's world.

I couldn't read this book in one sitting, I had to do it in stages, it is powerful stuff, I have an eating disorder, and I can relate to some of the thing Marya is saying, especially about how you fit your sickness to suit your life and how you learn to be devious, to hide if from those around you, how the lies you tell are lies that you want to believe and so they become the truth.

This is another book that we should give teenage girls to read because I think that it just might sway some of them from taking the road that Marya took and barely survived going down.

An incredible, disgusting, compulsive, painful, and totally addictive read about a subject most of us would rather avoid if we could.

184 of 204 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Please Be Careful May 15, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

First of all, I would like to say that I really loved Marya's very candid and real way of writing. She didn't candy-coat or tip-toe --- she told the truth. And she told it very well. My warning though is that, as someone who has struggled for a long time with an eating disorder myself, many of us with ED's have considered "Wasted" to be a how-to guide for starting/maintaining an ED. Be careful. If you are vulnerable even a little bit, please save this read for a later, more stable time in your life/recovery. I do think it is a good eye-opener for parents and other loved ones of someone battling an ED. Not only does it supply the many, many twisted and secretive symptomatic behaviors we tend to engage in, but it also gives a very honest look at the emotions and issues behind the disorder. It's not about the food, or the weight, or the size. It's just a mask for something much more severe. We've had to resort to using our bodies to communicate instead of our voices. We lost our voice somewhere along the way, and the body became our target.
I don't feel the book itself is inherently bad or dangerous or whatever. I do, however, recommend EXTREME caution and consideration before reading this. Be careful. Be wise.

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars From a survivor of ED's July 23, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I have read this book a few times and had mixed reactions. I have been hospitalized twice for anorexia at the same hospital as Marya went to, and her experiences are brutally honest and true-to-life. Anyone wanting to understand anorexia or bulimia ought to read this book. Her quotes about how much she hated the bulimia episodes and how anorectics view bulimics are usually right on (although as both an anorectic and a bulimic, I have found quite a few exceptions to her "rule." I still suffer greatly from the two disorders, and it is refreshing to get someone's voice out there.

One CAUTION, however: If you suffer from an eating disorder, be very careful in reading this book. I have needed to put it down quite a few times because it was too intense for me, and I have been triggered by it quite a few times. But if you want to know what is going on inside your loved one's head, remember that everyone is different so do not assume he/she feels like Marya does, but also bear in mind that Marya has been through a lot of the same stuff that many people with ED's go through.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A tyraid against/tribute to anorexia and bulimia August 3, 2000

By Sara

Format:Paperback

Hornbacher has a great deal of insight into the causes of eating disorders. The beginning of her book is especially powerful, as she comments on the futility of a condition that "starts off as a mockery of society's standards and ends up mocking no one more than you". At times, she took my breath away with the accuracy of her succinct statements about anorexia.

Unfortunately, this book does much more than discuss the underlying issues of eating disorders. In painstaking, almost obsessive detail, Hornbacher describes her horrible battle with anorexia and bulimia. She is extreme in everything she does. When bulimic, she regurgitates such a large volume of food that it plugs her family's sewer system. When anorexic, she claims that she reached a shocking low of 52 pounds. The attention that Hornbacher devotes to reporting the gruesome details of her disease seems an indication that her issues with food are far from over. Especially disturbing is her lengthy, almost worshipful description of her emaciated body during her anorexic phase. We hear about the bones in her chest, her sunken cheeks, her stick-like legs, the gap between her thighs. And is it my imagination, or is there a fiendish pleasure in the description?

I was not surprised to read in the Amazon interview with Hornbacher that she is now relapsing. For anyone who is interested, the interview is available on this page, under "Amazon.com Articles". In the interview, Hornbacher's struggles with her eating disorder mindset are more apparent than ever. She even gets into an argument with the woman interviewing her, because the woman comments that she looks "fine". Hornbacher snaps back, "I'm totally underweight. I'm, like, 30 pounds underweight".... After all these years, she still needs to let everyone know the exact number of pounds she is lacking.

Marya Hornbacher is a perceptive, intelligent woman, who has a lot to say about what it is like to have an eating disorder. What she is lacking is the genuine desire to give up her anorexic world. It is for this reason that I find her book depressing and not extremely helpful.

Most anorexics and bulimics will probably be motivated to read "Wasted". It is engrossing, and feeds the internal monster that is an eating disorder. We hear number after number; weight, height, calorie consumption, age, number of hospitalizaions... All the morbid details are there, filling our minds, satisfying our desire for the specifics of starvation.

But in the end, we are left hungry. Hornbacher is now a married woman, still glorying in the feel of emaciation. She accepts the fact that she is going to die young. There is a feeling of inevitability and hopelessness that pervades "Wasted". Hornbacher is not cured, she does not have the answers, and she does not want to let go of her status as a severe anorexic. All she knows how to do is starve.

Reading "Wasted" will leave your eating disorder feeling glutted, and your true self feeling empty. I think there is more hope than Hornbacher would have us believe. For those who would like to believe anorexia and bulimia can be overcome, I highly recommend "The Secret Language of Eating Disorders" by Peggy Claude-Pierre. "Wasted" is no more than one woman's tribute to her feats of starvation. There is so much more to life. Read more ›