When I first read this a couple of years ago, I was new to the whole memoir genre. To be more specific, I was new to the tragedy memoir genre. This book left a huge impression on me because it was so different from anything I’d read before. Fast forward to 2006, when the New York Times Bestseller list has at least four memoirs about addiction that I can think of off the top of my head. Pick this up if you want, I guess. It’s not a bad book. I just can’t help but feeling that this recent explosion of over-the-top memoirs are the literary eqivalent of reality TV.

It lacked something. I live for psychological books, mainly on eating disorders, and this is one of my least favorites.

This is a heartbreaking look at how Marya Hornbacher nearly destroyed her life with anorexia and bulemia. There’s not the slightest bit of glamour some anorexia memoirs suffer from. This is both a cautionary tale and a cultural criticism.

I wanted to love the book. I just never really got into it. :(

trained as a writer and extremely intelligent, hornbacher’s wasted is the best depiction of what it is like to have eating disorders that i’ve ever come across.

the book doesn’t come across as preachy or pathetic because hornbacher understands her disorder thoroughly (she has obviously spent lots of time ruminating over it and that comes across in this book). she doesn’t claim to be “over” her eating disorder, and honestly conveys what it is like to always be haunted by it.