Honestly, when I was anorexic, I would prowl the self-help section of the bookstore, find the ED narratives, and comb through them for "diet tips." Not to say it's like that for everyone, but for me this type of book always acted as a trigger or twisted inspiration, and honestly sort of still tweaks me out today.

I agree... documentaries about eating disorders for example make me feel like I should be able to have willpower like that or something... the idea is that putting it out into the open how horrible it is should make it less desirable, but it doesn't really...

While it's nice that someone is telling the stories of their struggles... I agree with the previous posts. I was lucky and only starved myself for a year, but I used to LOVE watching movies and reading about anorexia. I'm even drawn to stuff like that still.

I loved this book. All of Laurie Halse Anderson's books are great.

I've had anorexia for around nearly 2 years now, it's nothing compared to what it use to be but i know the hardest thing for me back in the day was comparing myself to others. I remember there was one incident with a certain video clip on youtube that my friend sent me and after watching it i burst into tear and ate a muesli bar. I think the only issue about anorexia stories is to make sure to tell the pain behind it.

As someone who has not struggled with anorexia, I found any representation of it in books horrifying and fascinating. I doubt if a novel could push you in the direction of an eating disorder if you didn't have that tendency anymore than a peer could. Also, doesn't Cynthia M. Bulik look like an anagram for bulimia?

i've never struggled with anorexia but i've been around people who do and i don't really think that books like this help them fight it i think it might help trigger it all over again.

I''ve never had it but I think narratives of the condition are an insight into what goes on in the sufferers head. It helps me understand.

I've never had an eating disorder but I've had roommates who had bulimia. It's very hard for me to work up any sympathy for people who starve themselves to be skinny. To be brutally honesty, it's actually impossible. Thousands of people die every day for want of a meal and rich females all over the world purposefully starve themselves. There is no logic.

I have had anorexia for almost 10 years; since I was about 9 years old. (It started because of family issues and pbsessive compulsive disorder/anxiety, but over the years has taken many forms and been triggered by many things) I honestly think this book would be VERY triggering. Whenever I see documentaries about EDs or have discussions in any of my psych classes it really just encourages me to restrict and fast even more.

Books like this probably don't help people with eating disorders cuz even if it shows dire consequences, it still makes a heroine out of the sufferer. Even if it's fiction, people with an ED will still see their reasons for what they do justified in the mind of the heroine.

And these books certainly don't make me feel sympathy for sufferers. I can't help but feel that people with eating disorders are just too self-pitying and selfish. Even that one line above from the book, my thought is just "waaa, waaa, poor me", ugh, get over yourself. Sorry if that offends, but that's how I see it. I don't feel sorry for people with EDs any more than I do for people who smoke and end up with cancer or over eaters with heart disease.

I'm not even sure if I agree that it's a mental illness. Do people in poverty stricken countries who are starving get ED's? If it's a mental illness, shouldn't they or is that not how it works?

Well, WeTheLiving, certain mental illnesses are culture-specific. I'm no expert, but I imagine that this disorder is informed by the abundance that surrounds the person and the emptiness she or he feels. (Also, media images here encourage a very specific body type — superthin.) I don't understand eating disorders because I don't have one, but I feel compassion for people who have them.

I still have to read this book ... but I think that the YA imprint is trying to be edgy by having such a narrative.

I really have to speak out on this, mostly because I am infuriated by some of the comments on here. I have been battling anorexia for at least 5 years, beginning in high school. I had to be hospitalized my senior year because things had gotten so bad. I just wanted to clarify that anorexia or any eating disorder is in no way a self-pitying, or a purposeful thing. It's an all-encompassing, controlling and very powerful disorder that takes over your mind, your thoughts, and your actions. What began for me as a simple diet to try and eat more healthily quickly and suddenly evolved into the worst and hardest struggle of my entire life. I did not set out to have my eating disorder and there are so many days when I wish that I could just be normal again and eat food like a normal person without worrying. And it's not about self-pity but more about losing control over yourself. You literally begin to lose control over everything, becoming more and more fearful of food each day until eventually you are eating practically nothing. For me it was a very gradual process that intensified and grew worse with stress and anxiety from my life. The worse I got the harder and harder I found it was to climb out of the pit, and to be frank I didn't know how. I didn't know how to feed myself properly because of all these food rules that now dominated my life. And if I even tried to feed myself properly or just eat a small bite of something extra, immediately I was overcome with this overwhelming sense of fear, uncertainty and criticism. Anorexia is not a diet. Anybody can stop a diet just by simply returning to their old ways. But in my case, my eating disorder had grown so out of control that I didn't know how to feed myself properly and I was scared to death of eating again. Imagine your worst fear be it of death, spiders, heights, flying, and intensify that by about one hundred. You don't want to move forward because you don't know what's on the other side, you don't want to face your fears and you are just plain scared to death. And the worst part is that no matter how desperately you want to get better, you just can't stop. And I haven't even touched on having a distorted body image. That alone just makes the eating disorder even more powerful because no matter what anyone says or what the person in the mirror looks like, you always feel fat and you always believe that you are fat.

Once I was discharged from the hospital I found the recovery process to be about a hundred times harder than it was living with my eating disorder. Recovery is about changing the thought patterns, challenging the food rules, learning to eat normally again, and getting back to a healthy weight. Why would I want to give up everything that had consumed my life for so long when it was so familiar, the only source of comfort, and the only coping mechanism I knew? Why would you want to jump out the plane when you were absolutely certain that you would meet your ultimate demise if you did? Isn't it much safer to just stay put?

Sorry I'm on a rant, but I just really wanted to speak out about this. Anorexia is not a habit, it is an all-consuming fear that takes over every pary of your life. It's about believing a lie for so long that eventually it becomes the only truth. Trying to break down that lie is very very difficult.

As for the book, which was the main purpose of this post that I overlooked, I haven't read it yet but I can only imagine what it entails. I imagine that it includes every stereotype and commonality ever created about eating disorders. Beefed up with Laurie's incredible writing skills, it probably glorifies the actions of an anorexic instead of telling about the emotions and the fear that surround an eating disorder. I bet she doesn't even touch upon how painful and how fearful it is, or how often the sufferer (or at least I) lies awake in bed scared to death of dying but too scared to change. I really wish that people would stop trying to glorify such a serious demon and write intriguing and captivating stories all for the attention of an audience.

She is a great author but I think that unless she herself has had anorexia, she should not even begin to try and describe what anorexia is like.

That's my opinion.

Ok. So, while I agree that this woman is a good writer, and I understand that many young girls and women alike enjoy her books, I have to say that marketing a book about anorexia to the age group (13-17) where symptoms of anorexia begin showing is downright terrible! The girls reading these books are at a very tender, impressionable age, and I feel that reading a book that details anorexia so intensely and even provides names of pro-ana websites can be extremely damaging to their emotional and physical health. Of course, there will be people who read this book who don't have an ED and are not pre-disposed to having one that will learn about the disease and gain some helpful insight into the mind of an anorexic. However, a lot of people that have read or will read this book ARE pre-disposed to having an ED, and reading a book like this can definitely be a trigger. And, there is also the possibility that girls who don't already have an ED will read this and become curious about anorexia and unwittingly get themselves into a huge mess. The mind of a 14 year old girl is complicated; this book may cause pro-ana cliques at schools an other things like that since girls at that age tend to get really wrapped up in what is socially acceptable at the time. If this book is popular among young girls, is it not a logical process of thought to say, " Group of girls read this book...some may already be pre-disposed to EDs and this book is a trigger, while simply raising curiosity in others...pack mentality takes over and girls that don't have the problem already may start becoming anorexic to fit in with their other ED friends."

Perhaps that might not be right, but I know for a fact that if I had read this book at 14, I would have been fascinated and my anorexia which developed around age 17 would have been triggered much earlier. There was a comment on the post about this book on Jezebel where a school librarian said that she'd seen girls take home "Cut" by the same author, and come back with scratches and cuts all over their arms. A group of friends and I in 7th grade read the controversial "Go Ask Alice", and soon one fell into drug addiction shortly thereafter (cocaine at 14?!?) and then another and another. Eventually every one of my friends that read that book, including myself, succumbed to drug addiction for a while, although now we are all thankfully free of that. I just re-read it the other day, and as an adult I can appreciate how it truthfully details every aspect of drug use and addiction and what goes through a young girl's mind during that time. After I had done all of the drugs she did in that book, I could sympathize with the character and point out where she went wrong with her drug use. However, I really wish I hadn't read it at 13. It made drugs, an extreme taboo (esp. in the US), seem wild, fun, and rebellious. The fact that she died at the end had no effect on my young mind whatsoever. All I was looking for was something I could use as an escape, and I didn't even know what most drugs were until I read that book. I am by no means blaming the book itself, because as I said it is a well-written chronicle of young addiction, just as "Wintergirls" is a well-written chronicle of someone suffering through anorexia. I do however, disagree with marketing books like this to young girls, who tend to look past the dangers of these issues and only see the glamour of drugs or anorexia, the control the characters have over their lives due to their problems, and the exciting rebelliousness and attention that comes with being 'messed up' on drugs or an ED.

And I am simply APPALLED at the person that says "people with eating disorders are just too self-pitying and selfish....ugh, get over yourself. Sorry if that offends, but that's how I see it. I don't feel sorry for people with EDs any more than I do for people who smoke and end up with cancer or over eaters with heart disease."

I have to reiterate what the commenter above says. It is a POWERFUL mental ILLNESS that yes, some people willingly get themselves into, but eventually it takes over every aspect of your life and becomes uncontrollable. When I looked at myself in the mirror after losing 45 pounds in 2 months, weighing in at 95lbs, and thought I could still lose a little bit more fat on my thighs, it's not like I didn't know that was messed up. I knew I was too thin, but I couldn't change my habits. People with EDs can know that they're techincally too thin, but the mental illness part of it is that it is all-consuming and you can no longer control your non-eating habits, even if in your head you understand that there is a problem. Having something wrong with your brain that you simply cannot control is by no means self-pitying or selfish. It is an illness. I got myself into it because I was getting chubby and wanted to lose weight and that slid into complete loss of control. I am also bi-polar, if I am off meds I will become extremely depressed and sucidal and cry about how crappy I think my life is. Does my self-pity make it any less of an chemical imbalance? NO. Please...it has been proven that anorexia and bulimia are mental illnesses, and even if you don't agree, it is extremely disrespectful to those that have struggled with those diseases to call them "self-pitying and selfish".