User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
I always think how incredibly brave a person has to be, to put their personal struggle down in words. Eating disorder, anorexia, bulemia, binge eating, struggles with body image, all issues with which many struggle. The author dealt with some of these, and it made her life a struggle on a daily basis. Always afraid to let others know what was going on, she became an expert at hiding her troubles. She never felt good about herself, hated the way her body looked. It colored every aspect of her life.
She has come to terms with her illness with the help of others, but this will be an issue with which she always needs to be aware. A very readable and honest look at a very personal matter, but something that is at the forefront of our current culture. Body image is something many young girls struggle with and images in magazines and television add to their confusion. Susan's story will hopefully help others with these same issues.
ARC from Netgalley
Rating: really liked it
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This was an incredibly difficult read for me and I think it will be even harder for people who have actually suffered from eating disorders,
as it contains major triggers for eating disorders and anxiety. I actually think the author went about EMPTY in as healthfully a manner as she could, and I agreed with her that sometimes memoirs about the topic can read (accidentally) as sensationalist instruction manuals if they rely too heavily on numbers and tactics to get the point across.
Susan Burton has enjoyed a life of privilege, but privilege does not lessen or eliminate the onset of psychiatric illnesses. It can make getting good treatment better and prevent the onset of environmental stressors that come with poverty, but sometimes what happens is a sort of cognitive dissonance where people feel guilty for not being happy or healthy despite having so much.
Mental illness is an equal opportunity disease that can affect anyone or everyone and I think that is something important to keep in mind when reading memoirs like these, that we don't get to choose how our brains are wired, any more than we can choose who we are, and what we look like.
Burton describes her childhood in Colorado and her college years at Yale with a frankness that borders between self-effacing and brutally honest. She really captures the hormonally-charged uncertainties of high school and adolescence, and how that gets magnified with anxiety spectrum disorders. Over the years, she vacillates between anorexia and bingeing and talks about her body dysmorphia and the way she repeatedly turned to food as both a means of comfort and control. I can't imagine sitting down and writing about myself with such introspection; memoirs are tricky, because they almost require that you have to be removed from yourself, and look at yourself as you might a stranger. I think it necessitates an incredible amount of self-awareness and self-honesty and I'm not sure I could do that, even as a writer.
This is not an easy read or even a fun one, but I found it incredibly fascinating. As a psychology major, I was required to read a number of memoirs written by people with mental health disorders and since college was a while ago, the language and vocabulary employed by some of these authors was not as sensitive as it is now. I like how the author chose to structure this memoir, and I liked how it ended on a hopeful note with how she ended up being able to tell others about her disorder and seek treatment. It's raw and it's honest and it really tries to do as little harm as possible without pulling back the punches.
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!3.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
In galley, will be published in June. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Full disclosure, this memoir was written by a friend—but that's not coloring my judgment. It's brilliant. About struggles with food, growing up, self-knowledge, identity...
Rating: really liked it
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.
Some parts of this book were very hard to read. There were times that I put the book away for a few days because reading it stressed me out. I felt that way because these disordered eating thoughts are really hard to look at. I think that most people who have struggled with an eating disorder (or even failed diets) will be hit hard by this memoir.
One thing that really stood out was how inclusive this book was, despite being the experience of a single person. I think a lot of people (especially women) will be able to relate to the thoughts and emotions that Susan had about food and self worth. I have read stories of anorexia and bulimia but there's always this distance between myself and the subject. "Well I was never that bad". With this book it's harder to keep that distance. What woman hasn't dieted and then spent a week binging and hating themselves after the diet failed? How many women have watched with horror as their weight crept up, but stress drove them to find comfort in unhealthy foods?
Reading this reminds me that unhealthy eating patterns and judging self worth on appearance isn't something that's wrong with me, it's something that's wrong with our culture.
Rating: really liked it
If I wasn't a psychologist, I might have hated this book because I would have read it as whiney, monotonous, and even pity seeking. Although truth is, this is what many dysregulated eaters sound like.
Being a psychologist and a cognitive scientist, one who has studied disordered eating, I had a hard time with the surface level of detail the author provides.
Then I got to the end, where the author acknowledges each of these points. I almost wondered if this should have been a preface. That is, "
Dear reader, you are about to read a story that I am still living through. The difficulty I will detail remains a challenge and one I am still working to realize. Living with an eating disorder involves thought suppression and thought distraction - of which I have mastered. Some of these habits are hard to break..."
The book is well written, interesting, and important. Indeed, despite its many flaws, I liked it more upon finishing - when she acknowledges that this is simply the beginning of the healing process. I suspect many reader put the book down well beforehand.
Burton is indeed an insightful writer. Unfortunately, what frequently comes across as lazy, is in my opinion, remnants of her guardedness and experienced shame.
My life is to dig. I dig into the mind. I dig into the brain. I dig into data. I am driven both by "what" and “why.” Burton gives the average, analytically untrained reader, very little of the "why."
There is a deep irony in her story that I wish she had expanded on. Burton describes herself as a weary, unregulated, defective, and ineffective person who simultaneously gains acceptance to two of the most prestigious academic institutions in the county. As a psychologist, this is the Susan Burton I want to understand - both of them. Specifically, how does someone manage (or fail to manage) both being profoundly dysregulated (indeed, at times psychotic) and simultaneously completely in control? How are we to reconcile this? This is the Susan Burton I want to hear more about.
Rating: really liked it
In the end, this book was not for me. I hesitate to give a negative review when I know she is completely putting herself out there…that part, I totally admire. But honestly, I wish she had spent a few chapters outlining her struggles and then the second half of the book talking about how she overcame them. It was mainly one big long diatribe of her circular behavior between not getting her emotional needs met and then going back to food every time. Then, repeat. Over and over and over ad nauseam (literally). Again, I so admire her for putting this out there and her writing is strong but I just kept waiting for her to talk about her turning point. Also, how was she maintaining these incredibly destructive eating habits and still managing to be a successful student? (and not just at any school, at Yale for Pete’s sake) And then she goes on to be a successful writer and work at NPR. Towards the end she mentions it was a gradual recovery (and hints that she is still struggling in some ways). But honestly, I still wanted to hear more about that part...since I suffered through the dark and low bits, I wanted to hear more about the light. This was an incredibly well-written and interesting look at eating disorders, a subject we don’t often hear about, that would have been infinitely better as an essay instead of in the form of a book.
Rating: really liked it
The prose of this book was lovely. The story was not. Although difficult to read, I saw myself in the pages and if anything, felt soliditary with Susan- a book that shows you that you are not the only one in the world who feels these kinds of things.
Rating: really liked it
giveaway win!!
this book was tough. it wasn't hard to read, per se, but it made me hyper-aware of my own body, my own eating habits, my own insecurities. i kept pausing because i would get too deep in my own head and it would pull me out of the book.
but once i got that out of the way, it was a great read. susan writes wonderfully, and you really felt for her and her lifelong struggles with her body, food, and self-image. she's so thorough, namely her descriptions of past memories and experiences. it made sense to read that she kept all of her childhood journals and planners.
good memoir!! i've read a lot more memoirs as of late and it's been interesting.
Rating: really liked it
I received a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
While I can certainly see the value of this book to someone who has experienced or is currently experiencing living with an eating disorder, I cannot recommend it for those who are just looking to read a memoir. This book reads more like a textbook or a medical journal than a memoir, and in my opinion it lacked a personal feel. I definitely think it could be a useful resource for a particular audience, but it was not at all something I wanted to continue reading.
Rating: really liked it
3.5 stars
it breaks my heart that she never told a soul. yet the thing about eating disorders is that they consume every single relationship in your life and very often feel like the only friend you'll ever have. this hollowness haunts the book, particularly how she wanted so badly to be seen and yet be invisible all at once. burton does well to highlight that the cultural stereotypes surrounding EDs—the types of people who "have" it—causes irreparable damage to those suffering from them. a review i read expressed disbelief that burton could have both binge-eating disorder (which carries a different stigma altogether) and anorexia because she studied at yale and was "outwardly" successful, a disbelief which also contributed to the shame she feels. the book is soaked in that kind of shame ("someone like her can't possibly have an ED"), and beckons readers to understand that anyone, really, could have an eating disorder—though some people are more predisposed due to social-political circumstance—and that secrecy hurts. some parts fell flat for me since i was reading to relate and didn't relate to certain parts, but otherwise i really liked it.
• "In an eating-disorder story, the protagonist still has to eat. There is no clean break. You relinquish the addiction but not the substance. You have to learn to live with it. Maybe you even learn to take pleasure in what you once believed could destroy you."
• "Maybe this is what happens with shame—the buried thing insists that it is the most important."
• "Empty—for years I still loved it. Emptiness was possibility. Empty is the moment before the future gets filled in. But it's a state of impoverishment, not sustenance, and my unwillingness to accept this has been my great mistake. Empty amounts to nothing. If I wasn't empty, then almost any other version was a failure. Already ruined, already wrecked."
• "I will have to learn to live with something other than blankness and the possibility of a future in which everything is exactly right. I will have to learn that I can feel regret, disappointment, discomfort, that I can have those feelings, any feeling, and still be okay. And maybe, finally, I will learn to feel full."
Rating: really liked it
Now I was drowning out nothing. That's what you needed to muffle most, all that was missing. First things first: For me, this book was truly transformative. I feel as if, to an extent, someone has opened a window to my mind, spoken of those things I never had the words to describe. People love to speak of the ordeal of being seen, but in this case I felt seen in an utterly positive way (despite the subject manner) because, in a way, I have found permission to not be ashamed of my reality within the pages of this book.
As someone who herself has suffered/is still suffering from eating disorders, I have no proper words for this book - it was beautifully haunting, with Susan Burton's struggle palpable as I tried to process those words that seemed to hit almost too close to home.
The book itself takes us on a journey through Susan Burton's adolescence, describing in great detail her struggle with her eating, but also many other aspects of her life which either influence or are influenced by it. Relationships, school, family. Whilst some may perceive the book as too clinical for a memoir (which I can somewhat understand), I personally think it perfectly mirrors the author's more 'scientific' connection to her disorders, her attempt at regarding her struggles in an empiric way. In the epilogue, she even goes as far as mentioning that she hoped scientists would find her writing, would find her - so they might even be able to provide her with a conclusion, a "paragraph that makes sense of this for you". That being said, her story does not lack emotion - how could it, with eating disorders so deeply rooted for many in exactly that. The author even goes as far es describing an eating disorder as a "physical manifestation of emotion", which I have found to be scarily accurate.
I love this book and will no doubt re-read it at some point, because it was such a cathartic experience for me. In general, I would recommend it to those struggling with eating disorders themselves, or those who would like certain insight into the struggle that comes with the territory of EDs.
Rating: really liked it
This is a very relatable memoir of what it’s like to live with an an eating disorder. I wouldn’t recommend it if you are struggling or easily triggered.
What I liked about this book is that, although it did recount the teenage experience, it also showed how her eating disorder carried on all the way into mid-life and explained that she was still struggling.
Too often we read about the teen girl’s experience and then it’s all wrapped up in a nice bow at the end “I got better and never struggled again” when the reality is that many people will struggle with the disorder throughout their lives and every single day they must make the conscience decision to choose recovery.
I deeply related to this book as someone who has cycled between bulimia and anorexia throughout my lifetime. There is no magic pill to make things better. This wasn’t the most horrifying account of an ED that I’ve read, but it made me think over my own experience and how lucky I am to be alive and to have lived through the things I put my body through.
I loved the end where she talked about the ED voice like a soundtrack and instead of deleting the ED voice, she could only turn the volume down and turn up the volume of the other tracks. The ED voice will always be there but it doesn’t have to be the loudest.
I think there is always a danger in writing about eating disorders because often they seem to be romanticized, but that’s the problem. Eating disorders, like anorexia, seduce the suffers’ minds with lies and feelings of perfection and euphoria, so it’s almost impossible to write about these disorders without conveying that. But Susan was very careful not to share numbers or “tips” throughout her writing and I think she did the best she could while still expressing the way she felt.
Rating: really liked it
"Ask yourself why you are trying so hard to be a child again." This is a question posed by Susan's mother after she observes her daughter in the grip of anorexia.
Susan Burton's memoir explores her adolescence through adulthood via her struggles with food. She first develops anorexia during high school, a difficult time in any teenage girl's life, but her life has also recently been uprooted by her parents' divorce and a move halfway across the country. Susan's eating issues swing from not eating to binge eating.
Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder, but is rarely highlighted in books, so this was a rare insight into binge eating that was not a part of bulimia. When Susan was dealing with her binge eating issues, there was very little information out there on the condition. She does highlight several facts about the disorder as she learns more about it and begins to recover.
While this memoir reads very similarly to other memoirs I've read of individuals struggling with eating disorders (e.g., childhood upheaval, beginning of eating issues while young, intensifying troubles in adolescence/college, recovery), I did appreciate the highlighting of an eating disorder that does not get as much attention and the author also writes well, and gives the reader nice insight into her thoughts and behaviors.
Thank you to Random House via NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ebook.
Rating: really liked it
I found that this book was a little hard to get into. I was expecting a memoir type book about a woman who was going through an eating disorder however the book felt more clinical and colder than memoirs usually do. I found our main character very hard to relate to and the story didn't help much because it made our main character seem almost cold instead of a real person who went through real problems. I also found the main character to be very cold and almost robotic at times. Even when they were talking about things that happened in her past she still didn't seem like a real human to me. I did feel for her a bit but it was almost like an alien describing what they think needs to be said. I struggled to finish that book and considering the subject that is something that rarely happens. Interesting idea in concept however I think that the delivery of it was a bit lacking. It wasn't until about half way through the novel that it really started to pick up. I got more insight into the author and what she was going through so that was very nice. Much more of what I was expecting when I picked up the book in the first place. There were lots of things that I would change about this book but it did have its redeeming qualities. So I would say that this book was about fifty-fifty in my opinions of it.
Rating: really liked it
Raw, honest and moving. I attended high school and graduated the same year as the author. I was always in awe of her intelligence, her classy demeanor and beauty. While those things remain true, this book explains it was not all as it appeared. Brave book.
