Product Description
Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

Amazon.com Review
"I fell for the great American dream, female version, hook, line, and sinker," Marya Hornbacher writes. "I, as many young women do, honest-to-God believed that once I Just Lost a Few Pounds, suddenly I would be a New You, I would have Ken-doll men chasing my thin legs down with bouquets of flowers on the street, I would become rich and famous and glamorous and lose my freckles and become blond and five foot ten." Hornbacher describes in shocking detail her lifelong quest to starve herself to death, to force her short, athletic body to fade away. She remembers telling a friend, at age 4, that she was on a diet. Her bizarre tale includes not only the usual puking and starving, but also being confined to mental hospitals and growing fur (a phenomenon called lanugo, which nature imposes to keep a body from freezing to death during periods of famine).

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 425 reviews)

Healthy persons need not read by Marcella Van Oel (Seattle)

1 Stars
November 01, 2009
Marya's story draws you in, in the same way driving by a recent car crash simultaneously captivates, horrifies and fascinates. However, you drive on feeling sympathy for the victims. No such corollary feeling is derived from reading this pathologically self-absorbed recounting of a young woman's eating disorder. The reader is not allowed to come up for air. Yes, you get to see in excruciating detail the behaviors and consequences of her disorder. If that's entertainment, read on. But step back for a moment and you realize that not once does this woman ever look outside herself for help, remedy, even a different perspective or something greater than herself and you understand that that is the real disease and food or lack thereof is just the delivery system. True, this can be said of any addiction, which then begs the question: Why bother? Unless you want to get down in it and wallow in self-pity and the glories of uncontrolled self-loathing (and who needs more of that?) this book is best avoided. If you already are the self-loathing type this won't inspire you to do it any "better".

Amazing! by Jodi Pacheco (Boston)

5 Stars
October 08, 2009
By far one of the bst books I've ever read! It was written perfectly to make you feel like you were going through the sickness with Marya. Loved it.

cool by Nicole R. Monyak (ohio)

5 Stars
September 26, 2009
It's a really cool book but I NEVER GOT IT IN THE MAIL but other than that the books awesome..

Stunning by Fiona E. Place (Sydney, Australia)

5 Stars
September 08, 2009
This book is written by a writer. Stark, funny and insightful. I hope it gains the wide audience it deserves.

Lacking. by J. Heng (Los Angeles, California, United States)

3 Stars
September 02, 2009
This book is long and hard to read. I picked it up after hearing raving reviews online. Note that I have never been and am still not a victim of eating disorders, nor do I know anyone who has been through EDs. People have criticized the book as being terribly self-centered, but I didn't mind that. It's a memoir about anorexia and bulimia; I wasn't expecting a typical American high school kid's point of view. Hornbacher had been battling bulimia since the tender age of four, later developing anorexia when she became fifteen years of age. The story goes back and forth, detailing her endless anecdotes about vomiting, purging, food, dieting, exercising, friends, and basically events of her early life. She's sent to boarding school. She enters college without a high school diploma because she's academically advanced and has most of the credits, despite having led a harsh childhood. Different people seem to be criticizing the book for different things. Hornbacher is self-centered. Hornbacher's parents and family seem to not really pay attention to their child. Personally, I think more people should of judged her based on what she wrote in this book and not what actually happened. After I read the whole book (took me two days), I still can't tell you what the point of this was. Depressing? It was for some people, but I knew what I was in for. Long? Yeah, I felt like the editors and publishers should of done some more homework. But it seems so pointless.

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