3. Wasted

By Marya Hornbacher

Probably the most reccomended and referred to memoir on the ED shelf. I find the first half a bit tedias, as is more like an autobiography of her life in general which led to her ED. It is the second half which really touched me, the way she articulated things in my mind, and I dare say many other's minds, which I never thought could be put onto paper. She is astonishingly accurate in her description of bulimia and especially anorexia, and she describes the consequences in their blunt, devastating reality. She manages to communicate the paradox of both pride and destruction that the illness simultaneously gives.

‘I wanted to get caught to be seen as something, to have a claim to greatness, to have the sick admiration that comes to those of us who destroy ourselves particularly well.’

‘When she leaves you alone, there’s a silence and a solitude that will take some getting used to... There is a profound grief. And there is, in the end, after a long time and more work than you ever thought possible, a time when it gets easier... There is, in the end, the letting go.’