This book is the definition of disturbing....but it may bring "skinny" into a better perspective for you. The media should read this & then re-evaluate what kind of skinny is appropriate for women...

this book is beautifully written. marya hornbacher is a phenomenal writer, and i have read this book at least 5 times over, never growing tired of her vivid descriptions of an uphill battle with an eating disorder. i've read all 3 of hornbacher's books (all of which i finished in approximately 3-4 days, because i could NOT put them down), and truly look forward to any further books/memoirs she has in the works, as i know they will be equally brilliant.
this book is life changing...it's heart breaking...it's beautiful...it's scarring...it's amazing.

Wasted is Marya Hornbacher's terribly disturbing memoir of her experiences with anorexia, bulimia, and other self-destructive behaviors. Her eating disorders began at age nine and continued until about age 20. During this period her weight fluctuated between 135 and 52 pounds. She was hospitalized or institutionalized several times for extended periods. At age 19 she nearly died. In addition to her eating disorders, Marya abused alcohol and various drugs (pot, speed, cocaine, heroin) and was sexually promiscuous starting at a young age. At the time she wrote this memoir (age 23) it was not at all clear that she had recovered.

For readers who enjoy shockingly graphic descriptions of other people's deeply disturbed lives, this book is for you. May your number be small.

For readers trying to understand the origins and triggers of eating disorders, this book offers a vast array of possible causes, so vast that it is nearly useless.

For readers wanting to understand what an eating disorder is like, this book provides a truly horrible catalog of symptoms, behaviors, and consequences.

For readers actually struggling with eating disorders, this book will probably do no good, and may do harm. In the Introduction, Marya states, "I am not here to spill my guts and tell you how awful it's been..." However, that is precisely what she proceeds to do. This book is about little else besides the grim awfulness of her eating disorders and her other self-destructive behaviors. It offers no hope whatsoever. Moreover, much of this memoir has a strangely neutral tone, as if Marya is unwilling to render any moral commentary on her own past, as if she maintains some sort of fondness for it and perversely enjoys the attention it brings her.

The wisest and most helpful words in this book come from one of Marya's friends, who never had an eating disorder, but who tells Marya that she tried to make herself throw up once. But she stopped herself. She was "gripped by the sudden sense that what she was doing was wrong...a crime against nature, the body, the soul, the self."

i cannot believe how relieved i felt after reading this book. i myself have anorexia and connect on so many levels with the author. the anger, the superiority complex, the fatal drive for "just a little bit more"... I believe the point in time in which the author wrote the memoir was perfect, where she is still the cannonball firing herself into life. her mind was still in the element of anorexia which makes it all the more puncturing for your eyes to read, revealing the struggle keeps going and going. her following book, "madness", follows up on her life after the beginning of the illness and is also very good. this provides her later wiser point of view and her difficulties with bipolar 1.

This book offered me a lot of insight into an actual sufferer's life, rather than what clinicians say a sufferer's life should be. Of course, Marya states that her family was dysfunctional to some extent, but it wasn't how the doctors had cut it out to be. I think it helped me understand my eating disorder better.