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Wasted  By  cover art

Wasted

By: Marya Hornbacher
Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
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Publisher's summary

Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve.

Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live.

Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal."

In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders. Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to the darker side of reality, and her decision to find her way back again - on her own terms.

©1998 Marya Hornbacher (P)1998 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, A Division of Random House, Inc.

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What listeners say about Wasted

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Abridged=Horrible

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No. Everything pertinent is left out and I was beyond disheartened when one of my top 3 books was butchered. Bad call.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Marya

What does Marya Hornbacher bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Great charisma, but the throwing away of 50% of her amazing (in book) biography hurt me.

Was Wasted worth the listening time?

yes and no

Any additional comments?

GET AN UNABRIDGED VERSION!!!

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17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Glamorless...

In “Wasted,” Marya Hornbacher’s battle with her body is nothing short of epic, but unlike a true epic it is far from heroic. Hornbacher is the unlikely antagonist in her own life story, hating her body to the very brink of death. “Wasted” captures every dramatic, painful and often repulsive detail. If you can bear to look at it, you will glimpse in raw form the gruesome reality of eating disorders. There is no glamor here. There is hunger, vomit, blood and bones.

This abridged version of “Wasted,” read by Hornbacher herself, is so seamless that I did not even realize it was abridged until I discovered this fact in another listener’s review. Hornbacher is the perfect narrator. No other reader could get this story so right.

If you are hoping for a happy ending, Hornbacher advises you to look elsewhere. She denies the existence of a happy ending to her story, claiming that the best one can hope for in the end is simply “letting go.”

But here is a secret – many years have passed since this book was written. During those years Hornbacher continued to struggle with her eating disorder, and she came face to face with a terrible mental illness that left her grasping for sanity and hope (see “Madness: A Bipolar Life). In the end, she managed to do better than just let go. She conquered and overcame. And, lucky for the rest of us, she lived to write about it.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Awesome

I've read this book atleast 3 times. The book itself is written to not keep any part of bulimia or anorexia hidden. It explains all and every feeling imagined and felt. When I had the chance to download this book with Marya's own voice reading her own words, it was a chance to listen to how she speaks. Her words, sometimes haunts, sometimes makes me speak outloud to nobody, saying things like, "Yes, that's true." It's an amazing book to have on audio. Download this book, and listen to it. You'll be glad you did.

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14 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

abridged memoir

I love this book, so I jumped at the chance to hear the author read it. I do wish it was unabridged, however, as there are some really good, key parts that are missing--things I really wanted to hear her say.

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12 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Quick read, hard to put down

If you're like me and you find mental illness fascinating this is a really well written first person account of what it's like to struggle with Anorexia Nervosa. It's interesting to see how an eating disorder begins and spirals out of control.

I saw a documentary with this author recently where she stated that she was young when she wrote this book and it triggered her eating disorder. Perhaps that is why there are many people who consider this entire book a trigger and have mixed emotions about it. I'd be interested to read her take on the events now, many years later, as recovered as anyone could be.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Intense, painful, mandatory reading

This is a subject every caring person should try to understand. Having know bulemics I cared about I have tried to understand - but still do not. This book brings me closer to an understanding. However, the insight is only a feeling and a glimpse.

Marya's writing reminds me of Mary Karr (Liar's Club and Cherry). At times the narrative becomes poetry. It is a pleasure to listen to at the same time as the content makes one mad.

This is another illustration of the superiority of audio books. I have not attempted to read this book, but I confidently predict that it is many times more powerful to hear Marya tell you the story in her own words. Like Mary Carr, Bill Bryson and many others, hearing an author read their own words adds an extra dimension and, in the case of Mary and Marya, can elevate the book to a different plane.

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5 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Wish it was unabridged

Dear Audible,
Please release an unabridged version. Why even abridge audiobooks?
Sincerely,
An audio book obsessive.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Excellent, but dangerous.

WARNING: Do not read Wasted if you are recovering. Do not share Wasted with someone who is trying to recover.

This is a very triggering book, though very eye-opening to the non-sufferer. This exposes the worst consequences of eating disorders. It shoes how they affect the whole person, all written eloquently by a very talented author. Marya Hornbacher is incredible, and her story inspiring. This book is at once captivating and frightening. A worthy read for the strong and ready.
Five stars.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Gut Wrenching

I have not read the unabridged version, but do not feel I need to. The adbridgement seems superb, and hearing the author read it gives the story sometimes unbearable emotional impact. This is not an easy listen. The author's unflinching honesty is, at times, very painful. The story is not a happy one, and you will find absolutely NO sugar-coating. What you will find is an amazingly talented writer bringing to bear her considerable skill to the description of her self-destructive eating disorder. To hear this from her point of view has taught me much that a textbook never could.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Fascinating story of obsession and self-loathing

This was a really interesting memoir, with a real insider's view of the anorexia and bulemia. I have never had an eating disorder, so I have always wondered what could drive a person to commit a long, torturous suicide in this way. I felt I had learned something after listening to this book, while also being entertained from beginning to end. I almost wish there was a follow-up memoir to find out what happens to her later in life.

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3 people found this helpful