Bitter Ice: A Memoir of Love, Food, and Obsession (Hardcover)

by Barbara Kent Lawrence (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This revealing but rather suffocating memoir chronicles Lawrence's horrendous 27-year marriage to Tom, a severely disturbed anorexic. Although both came from privileged homes, each of their childhoods was marked by a lack of parental love. Shortly after their marriage, Tom's daily rituals of jogging, followed by alternating ice baths and saunas, began to dominate their lives. His obsession with eating only foods he deemed healthful kept him painfully thin. He also made demands on Lawrence to eat less, even though she was pregnant with their first child. After the birth of their second child, Tom was briefly hospitalized for psychiatric problems, at which time a physician told him, in response to his inquiry, that only women could be anorexic. After his release, Tom's eating disorder became more noticeable, while Lawrence turned into a classic enabler: she isolated herself from family and friends, hid the severity of her husband's condition and did nothing to interfere with his self-destructive bent. Lawrence devotes a good deal of her account to detailing her husband's controlling nature and truly disgusting habits (he was observed spitting into the family's food, among other indecencies), which alienated his children as well as the people hired to work in the real estate office that Tom and she jointly ran. Lawrence's focus is on describing her own unhappiness and suffering, which was considerable, rather than on shedding any light on anorexia, other than highlighting the symptoms. She does, however, accept responsibility for her contribution to this destructive marriage that ended in divorce. Author tour. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Lawrence has put together a troubling yet fascinating memoir of her marriage to an alcoholic with anorexia and other obsessive-compulsive disorders. She details many of the manifestations of his disease, such as ritualized and prolonged exercise, food binges involving "forbidden" foods, and an intense fear of bloating that prevented him from drinking water. (The "bitter ice" in the title refers to the husband's habit of constantly crunching ice chips to suppress hunger pangs as well as to get some fluid into his body.) What is most disturbing about the book is how long Lawrence stayed with her husband even though his behavior progressively disintegrated. Lawrence does detail her own dysfunctional childhood in an attempt to explain why she felt compelled to stay with someone who constantly denigrated her. Although she eventually broke free of him, it is obvious that writing this book was an attempt to exorcise some leftover demons. Recommended.APamela A. Matthews, Gettysburg Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company (November 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688162150
• ISBN-13: 978-0688162153
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #367,182 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book provoked mixed emotions for me., December 31, 2000

By	Betti Trapp (Riyadh Saudi Arabia) - See all my reviews

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 'American Beauty' meets the 'Thin Man', April 10, 2000

By A Customer

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.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A courageous story - riveting, disturbing, important, November 19, 1999

By A Customer

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.