Wasted

A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

By: Marya Hornbacher

Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher

Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of five, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on a enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried--because she thought she was fat. By age nine she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repetoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve.

Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington, D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to fifty-two pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live.

Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya sustained both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and, ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family and cultural causes unlying 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 again--on her own terms.©1998 Marya Hornbacher; (P)1998 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, A Division of Random House, Inc.

An Excellent Window...

Into the life of an anorexic, bulimic. For those of us who can't imagine a compulsion to starve it is almost incomprehsible. I was struck by how functional the writer was even during her worst times..Excelling in theatre, writing and more...She doesn't give herself enough credit for that. I think all mothers of teen girls should make time for this story..there is a lot to learn regarding what NOT to do and say to our daughters..

I came so close and this captured my experience so well.

I like that it showed the pain you caused so much and I’m in my case i don’t know know why.

Touching

Got immersed in the story. Thanks for sharing Ms. Mayra. Would recommend to anyone interested in knowing more about eating disorders.

great book

She is a very talented writer, such a s way with words. Does a vivid job of painting pictures of madness in your head.

Quick read, hard to put down

If you're like me and you find mental illness fascinating this is a really well written first person account of what it's like to struggle with Anorexia Nervosa. It's interesting to see how an eating disorder begins and spirals out of control.

I saw a documentary with this author recently where she stated that she was young when she wrote this book and it triggered her eating disorder. Perhaps that is why there are many people who consider this entire book a trigger and have mixed emotions about it. I'd be interested to read her take on the events now, many years later, as recovered as anyone could be.