Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Marya Hornbacher
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  400 reviews
Sales Rank: 9923
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0060858796
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.85260092
EAN: 9780060858797
ASIN: 0060858796
Publication Date: February 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: some highlighting/notes, pages/covers worn
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Amazon.com
"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).
Product Description
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.
Download Description
Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustains both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." By the time she is in college, Hornbacher is in the grip of a bout with anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she re-created the experience and illuminated that tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders. Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to the darker side of reality, and her decision to find her way back--on her own terms.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 395 more reviews...
 A Wasted Piece of Money. July 24, 2008
Before I delve into my textual diatribe on why this book fails on so many levels, let me go ahead and issue this disclaimer: I am aware this is no "feel good" treatise. I understand it's "raw, painful & bloody". I comprehend to the best of my abilities the candor in which she constructed every disposable consonant and vowel imaginable, as I am also very cognizant of the fact I no longer have my Barnes and Noble receipt and cannot return this pile of rubbish for a full refund.
Eating disorders make one pretty self-absorbed, but the deluge of pitiful emotions Hornbacher must drudge up on daily bases must be a private Hell to which I have no ticket. In this book, she manages to make bulimics and anorexics look dull, self-centered, sans any kind of emotional or mental intelligence. I see here, or so the Amazon dot com website tells me, she also suffers from bipolar disorder and is, yet again (way to go, Hornbacher), cashing on all the things wrong with her so she may stretch herself naked against the frigid electron microscope of my literary wrath. She owns up to every horrific thing you could ever do to yourself and to everyone around you (bulimia at a precocious age, self-aborted pregnancies, promiscuous behavior on shuttle buses, etc), which I suppose is admirable, however it does not lessen the validity of one's horror thinking that someone can be that truly off from the rest of society.
I am a counselor for girls with eating disorders here on the web, and I would not recommend this tripe to them with the beating of my own heart. This is not a recovery tool. It's a veritable, raving, histrionic account that our society and the generations before us have done a fantastic job of messing everything up for the common person and, shall I say, have given writing contracts to those who only mass-market themselves. Kudos, Hornbacher. You have officially turned my stomach.
 Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia July 13, 2008
The book was great. It wasn't at all a phony "inspirational" or advice type book, and the author speaks in a refreshingly honest tone; none of the whiney "woe is me" you might expect. Overall an excellent book, although I will say that I was mildly put off by the ending. But I suppose that no one really picks up this book with the intention of using it to replace therapy. She's not going to "cure" you, or even tell you how she was "cured". As long as you know that before hand, it's a great read.
 Excellent writing, horrific story July 1, 2008
This was exceptionally written. Marya is a girl who suffers from severe anorexia and bulimia and lived to tell about it. When she begins her story and talks about when she first started her bulimia, her observations of things at this young age seemed far beyond her years. Her feelings and thoughts are described in the most intricate detail and intelligence. It isn't a surprise that Marya won awards for her writing.
I grew up during the 70's and 80's but I can't really relate to the obsession with body, weight and food. Society may play a part in her eating disorder but I think her family, their lifestyle, her relationship with her parents and their eating habits all contributed to Marya's eating disorder.
I am amazed at how well Marya was able to put her experience, thoughts, feelings and diagnosis into words. Her ability to go back and interpret her disease and why she did the things she did is truly amazing.
I think all girls, teenagers and adult woman should read this book. Not only for the perspective of the eating disorder but to get a true picture of how everywhere you go women are talking about their weight and the parts of their bodies they hate.
Incredible Journey Through Hell of EDs June 3, 2008
Marya Hornbacher is witty, honest, and surprisingly insightful. Marya does not hold back. I can not imagine what it is like to have the truth (pretty much, the bad, the ugly, and the uglier) out on paper, much less published and widely circulated. It certainly takes courage. There is always a little part of the human psyche that does not want to "look in the mirror" to face the self-created and self-destroyed reality. I was equally impressed to find out that Marya was 23 years old when she wrote this memoir, the maturity of her voice, philosophical discussions, and the depth of her experiences do not betray this fact. This is definitely a must read for anybody looking to find out more about life (and death) with EDs.
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia April 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Marya Hornbacher is the mediator between the everyday human being and the world's most widely misunderstood creatures of society: the eating-disordered. In "Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia", she explains to readers that eating disorders are not just "phases" that teenage "girls" go through, but rather an intense, passionate desire for power that "strips you of all power" instead.
Hornbacher, a freelance journalist who is also the author of "The Center of Winter" and "Madness: A Bipolar Life", developed bulimia at age nine, developed alcohol and drug issues at the age of thirteen, and became anorexic at the age of fifteen. After her release from a residential treatment hospital, she attended the University of Minnesota and wrote for the local paper, accepting her scholarship to American University later in 1992. She later developed other physical problems following her continued eating disorders.
Although a rather sullen story of the highs and lows of her struggle with weight, Hornbacher addresses the point that eating disorders, cultural obsession with weight and body, food, and control have a lot in common. In one section of the book, she writes that an eating disorder is
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