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I have read this book a few times and had mixed reactions. I have been hospitalized twice for anorexia at the same hospital as Marya went to, and her experiences are brutally honest and true-to-life. Anyone wanting to understand anorexia or bulimia ought to read this book. Her quotes about how much she hated the bulimia episodes and how anorectics view bulimics are usually right on (although as both an anorectic and a bulimic, I have found quite a few exceptions to her "rule." I still suffer greatly from the two disorders, and it is refreshing to get someone's voice out there.One CAUTION, however: If you suffer from an eating disorder, be very careful in reading this book. I have needed to put it down quite a few times because it was too intense for me, and I have been triggered by it quite a few times. But if you want to know what is going on inside your loved one's head, remember that everyone is different so do not assume he/she feels like Marya does, but also bear in mind that Marya has been through a lot of the same stuff that many people with ED's go through.

As the mother of an anorexic\bulimic, I found this to be a brutally honest account of the life of an eating disordered young woman. While I watch my own daughter struggle on a daily basis with her own eating disorder, I now realize, that try as I may, I cannot stop her. I can love her, accept her and support her, but I cannot stop her. This book supplied me with some much needed insight into the problems entailed with anorexia\bulimia. I can only empathize with the women experiencing this disease, and can understand as a parent, the pain and heartache this monster can cause. I have read many books about anorexia and bulimia, sat in the eating disorder therapists office, the nutritionists office, and been with my daughter as we saw doctor after doctor, from pediatrician, to gyn, to a doctor who specializes in eating disorders. I know my daughter fights daily. She is now married and lives far away, but she still speaks of her anorexia\bulimia every time we are on the phone. I would have fixed it if I could, but only she has the power to do that. My prayers are with her and Marya and all the women suffering at the hands of this monster. This was definetly, the most realistic, honest and hardest (yet best) book I have ever read on this subject.

This book was so powerfull, it pulls you in and sucks you under, not unlike anorexia and bulimia themselves. As someone who is struggling to gain control of my own eating disorder, i found an odd sense of comfort to hear my own words echoed by someone else, right there in print. When she talks about being torn between two lovers, anorexia and bulimia, going from one to the other, it hits me how serious my own addiction to the both are. Her words of pain, hunger, they will help even people without eating disorders to begin to understand. If only in a small way, becuase sometimes, she seems so out of control, so undeniably crazy, how could anyone understand only weighing fifty two pounds and still not eating? Her words are haunting, there are no pat answers, and she dosent seem to struggle to find any to give us. Those of us who are reading and struggling with our own demons will know by the end that it is not the end, you are never completley recovered, and it is so easy to sllip back into an old lovers embrace. I often felt when i was reading this book that she was reading my mind, her words are blunt and she pulls no puches. A truly disturbing and passionate look into the real day to day life of living the nightmare of an eating disorder, not the usual glossed over, becomes a movie of the week crap. She says that she wrote this book to keep others from taking the same path she did, and i hope it does help. for others like me who are already on the same path with her, it was a slap of reality. How truly bad things can get if you dont get help, or at least never stop trying to get well. I highly recommend it for women with and without eating disorders, any woman in today's "thin is in" society. This may be a difficult read for the friends or family of those with eating disorders, but it is well worth it if you want a brutal look into your loved ones life. I wish i could thank the author personally, for what must have been a incredibly hard journey to write about her own struggles with this ! disease.

I bought this book about one year ago, for a kind of test, where I had to write about eating disorders.

On the one hand this book is 'awesome' because it's written in a way, absolutely everybody is just feeling with the author.

On the other hand it is sometimes written quite horrible, all the things she does to lose weight. I often just couldn't carry on reading, because I felt sick.

But I think, for me it's one of the best books I've evr read, and I would recommend it to everyone, who ist interested in this topic or wants to get more information about it.

It's absolutely worth reading it!

I approached this book with an experiential bias, being a nearly 30-year-old woman who suffered from anorexia and bulimia for about 15 years. Most of my physicians don't understand why I'm alive today, as I was close to death's door on many occasions, and have done lasting damage to my body. In short, my battle with EDs is not necessarily better or worse than Hornbacher's-- which might enable me to empathize with her, I thought.Not entirely so. While I recognized every one of Hornbacher's "tricks" and mind games, and had implemented all of them (and a few that she didn't mention!) myself, I still felt that her explanations about the etiology of her disease were at times too pat. Anorexia/bulimia isn't about having a svelte figure, and I don't believe it's about parental neglect either-- nor is it about being a "poor little rich (or upper-middle-class) girl." Sure, Hornbacher ascribed other reasons for her disorder-- a general psychic falling-out between the mind and the body-- but I felt that the old cliches hovered over the story as a whole, doing a disservice to women (like myself) who are not "typical" victims of the disease.I'm impressed that such a young writer could sustain an autobiography/memoir this effectively, but I had trouble with her authorial voice at times. Her tough defensiveness, interspersed with self-pity (Look, I'm unflinching! Oops, now I'm flinching!) seemed abrasive to me after a while. It's unfortunate to say that I didn't much like the author, but unfortunately, when dealing with a memoir, the author's personality does come under scrutiny, and affects the book in its entirety-- and in "Wasted," I think the effect is negative. Hornbacher is no patron saint of eating disorders, nor is she particularly representative of anything other than the usual bag of tricks, although she is honest and does occasionally demonstrate a nice turn of phrase.