oh i hate giving memoirs anything other than glowing reviews. it feels like im commenting not only on this person’s writing but their life. so believe me when i say i hate that i didn’t like this more.

i think this is a perfectly fine book! i can understand why this resonates with so many people. i’ve not experienced the same eating disorders as burton has, but i do face ARFID and have always had issues with my body image, so im not completely isolated from her experiences. i did relate to her at many points in this book, especially her describing her relationship with food as a child. the only vegetable i ate until i was a teenager was cucumber (which i always had to have with tomato sauce mind you). we and toddler burton are like this 🤞 fr. i also really appreciate how burton didn’t focus on the glamorisation of eating disorders. that sounds like stupid praise because to write about the details of an eating disorder (e.g weight, methods, etc.) has been known to be a cardinal sin when recounting experiences. but just because it’s widely known that you shouldn’t do that doesn’t mean people don’t! especially since for burton i imagine her recounting her weight would only spur the feelings she explains in her book again. it’s not even that she tip-toed around the issue — she straight up doesn’t mention her weight, any methods she uses in her anorexia periods, she doesn’t shy away from the almost hidden nature of binge eating, and i adore her for that.

the thing i struggled with most in this book was the writing style. now ofc im not a fucking phd student of literature yet here i am critiquing a very well known author!!! who am i? but i cant ignore how i felt reading this. it almost felt like burton was writing a list, of getting to point a to point b and so on. although the story recounted her feelings, it didn’t feel like she was reliving them and i was an observer, it felt like i was watching a movie of burton watching a movie of these events. like it felt even more detached than second-hand, it felt almost robotic at times. and im not even knocking what some other reviews have, where they complain about this book repeating itself in a cyclical nature — newsflash that’s literally how eating disorders work (although i can’t lie and say it did get tiring as a reader, but im not gonna hold that against this book as those are the facts). but it felt like with every event, with every new change in burton’s life, the emotions were still flat. and yeah that can probably be ascribed to her fixation with food dulling her emotions, but it was hard to read as i felt like i was reading from a textbook, devoid of all feeling. the only parts i really felt “connected” to burton were parts i myself could relate to, but other than that it felt like this book was going through the motions.

either way though, i feel like this was a great insight into eating disorders in the long run — people don’t just “get over” eating disorders. it is a constant battle. this memoir also shines light on binge eating, a topic often forgotten about in conversations about eating disorders. it is just as real, just as harmful, and just as difficult to crawl out of.