From the author of I Love Dick, a characteristically incisive, wry, raw exploration of anorexia via Simone Weil and Kraus's own deeply personal experiences. A book which taught me all about flawed heroes and unreliable narrators.
“Anorexia is not evasion of a social gender role; it’s not
regression. It is an active stance: the
rejection of the cynicism that this culture hands us through food.”
I don’t know if I agree with this but Kraus does, as the blurb on the back of the book puts it so well, “reclaim anorexia
from the psychoanalytical girl ghetto of ‘poor self-esteem’”.
An extraordinary book and rightful winner of this year's Man Booker International Prize. A novel about food, culture, patriarchy which showed me how not to portray women with eating disorders as victims.
I read this when I was fifteen and refer to it frequently in my teenage diaries because it resembled Kate's experience on so many levels.
“I cannot help but think that had I lived in a culture where
‘thinness’ was not regarded as a strange state of grace, I might have sought
out another means of attaining that grace.”
A recently published, frank and deeply touching memoir of anorexia. This was the book that many of my collaborators said helped them the most.
