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Empty : a memoir / Susan Burton.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Random House, [2020]Edition: First editionDescription: xviii, 279 pages ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780812992847
  • 0812992849
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Prologue: 1991 -- Diet -- Puberty -- In our family -- Sunday morning -- Going west -- The mind-body problem -- The walk -- Stomachs -- Artifacts -- November 3-5, 1989 -- Winter -- Acting -- Independence -- College tour -- Secrets -- The obsession -- Late teen -- Leaving -- Kasha -- 7M -- Body image -- Child study -- Addiction -- Stomachs 2 -- Spring -- Sophomore slump -- Ritual purification -- The accident -- The end of something -- Epilogue: Telling.
Summary: "Susan Burton is ready to come clean. Happily married with two children, working at her dream job, she has lived a secret life of compulsive eating and starving for twenty-five years. This is a relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent narrative of living with binge-eating disorder. When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents' abrupt, hostile divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But she hadn't escaped unscathed, and in the fallout from her parents' breakup--including her mother's intensifying alcoholism--an inherited fixation on thinness went from "peculiarity to pathology." She entered into a painful cycle of anorexia, or "iron purity" and feral binge eating that formed the subterranean layer of her sunny life. This is the story not only of loosening the grip of her compulsion but of moving past her shame and learning to tell her secret. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of women's stories, brings to life an indelible cast of characters and tells a story of exhilaration, longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography BURTON, S. B974 Available 33111009652567
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An editor at This American Life reveals the searing story of the secret binge-eating that dominated her adolescence and shapes her still.

"Her tale of compulsion and healing is candid and powerful."-- People

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE

For almost thirty years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.

When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents' abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But in the fallout from her parents' breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from "peculiarity to pathology."

Susan entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success--she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse--she'd binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again--and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to "quit food."

Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of narrative and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation.

Prologue: 1991 -- Diet -- Puberty -- In our family -- Sunday morning -- Going west -- The mind-body problem -- The walk -- Stomachs -- Artifacts -- November 3-5, 1989 -- Winter -- Acting -- Independence -- College tour -- Secrets -- The obsession -- Late teen -- Leaving -- Kasha -- 7M -- Body image -- Child study -- Addiction -- Stomachs 2 -- Spring -- Sophomore slump -- Ritual purification -- The accident -- The end of something -- Epilogue: Telling.

"Susan Burton is ready to come clean. Happily married with two children, working at her dream job, she has lived a secret life of compulsive eating and starving for twenty-five years. This is a relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent narrative of living with binge-eating disorder. When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents' abrupt, hostile divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But she hadn't escaped unscathed, and in the fallout from her parents' breakup--including her mother's intensifying alcoholism--an inherited fixation on thinness went from "peculiarity to pathology." She entered into a painful cycle of anorexia, or "iron purity" and feral binge eating that formed the subterranean layer of her sunny life. This is the story not only of loosening the grip of her compulsion but of moving past her shame and learning to tell her secret. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of women's stories, brings to life an indelible cast of characters and tells a story of exhilaration, longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation"-- Provided by publisher.

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