ART OF STARVATION

by Sheila Macleod

The author combines a history of the disease, anorexia nervosa--first diagnosed three hundred years ago--and an account of her own battle against and hard-won victory over the disease. Giving an account of her own experiences growing up with anorexia, the author show how self-starvation is affected by one's own esteem, one's mother's and other people's views on what a woman ought to look like and shows that it is a problem still not fully understood.

Genres: Psychology

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Anne Earney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Holy cow, this was dense for a memoir. It's heavy on academic quotations and deep dives into the research and literature of the time (published in 1981). No dialogue. No true scenes. A close, detailed look at her own illness, but at the same time the tone served to keep me emotionally distant. The impression I'm left with is one of silence. The world of this memoir is a lonely, quiet one.

[Dawnelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! Which I found to be strange since I'm 45, not gay and don't have an eating disorder but it was a page turner for me. A great look into what some of our teens these days have to face.

[Mourning Star · Rating 4 out of 5]

1

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Guilty truth: I can't help imagining the subtitle as "The Academic Anorexic". This is an odd blend of memoir and academic literature analysis. The author addresses her own experience in the context of expert opinions of the time, but she also flips it -- measuring the literature against her experience.

This hampers here, in places -- she dismisses out of hand ideas that might be true for others because they were not true for her; much of the research she cites now seems terribly outdated -- but I love that she's well read enough, and sharp enough, to pull from and expand upon such a swath of material and use is discerningly. Mind, there are things that I find distinctly odd -- that, for example, she considers herself as not having been mentally ill for the bulk of her anorexia (page 106); her recipe for anorexia seems to rely too heavily on personal experience -- but for the most part, well, interesting nuance.