Erica Rivera

Deeply disturbing, for many reasons.

Erica Rivera is an adult woman, a single mother of two girls, with an eating disorder. Strangely, she refers to her eating disorder by juvenile pet names, "Ana" and "BB," which was ridiculous.

She's also almost certainly setting her daughters up to become eating disordered. In the book, she talks about watching her daughters chew and spit. She leaves them home alone while she goes out and runs.

Rivera claims to have anorexia, but I think she's actually bulimic. She reports eating 1800 calories a day (that's a lot!) and running obsessively. Maybe it's just because I recently read [b:Diary of an Exercise Addict|4066164|Diary of an Exercise Addict|Peach Friedman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328815157s/4066164.jpg|4113250].… (mehr)

This book was just okay. Maybe I'm burned out on the genre or something. The story was compelling enough, but...

I suppose one problem was the use of Ana and BB (Binge Bitch) that irked me. I'm not trying to undermine her eating disorder, and it appears that's how she really referred to it while she was suffering, but it just feels so immature, like something you'd see on a pro-ana board. I just cringed every time she called them by those names.

One more iffy problem is that it basically turns into a memoir about wanting to write a memoir. I don't really like when people refer to things as self indulgent, but that's how some parts felt to me. What memoir isn't to some extent though? But I don't know.. she admits to putting her journals out during a suicide attempt just so someone will publish them when she dies. Stuff like that is weird to me. I keep a journal for my personal use, not in hopes that it will be published..

Overall I guess it's worth the read if you like the genre, but there are better alternatives. It reads really fast and some parts truly are terrifying.… (mehr)

I found this book very difficult to read. The author's voice is intelligent, witty, and self-deprecating, and at first I enjoyed her wry commentary on therapists, doctors, and her own history with food. But after about 100 pages, I began to see her as grotesque, and to feel revulsion and disgust at her behavior. It wasn't just the bingeing, purging, and restricting, or the distorted body image and self-loathing (although these do become disgusting, especially when repeated so often.) But this book is presented as a memoir written by someone who has recovered, and the things I read were huge red flags for someone who has a way to go before she's exorcised her demons. She talks about going out to run, or satisfy a food craving, and leaving her PRESCHOOL children alone at home for hours at a time. When she is home, she's so wrapped up in her illness that she treats her two daughters like "hairy beanbags" (her words, not mine) who spend their lives in front of the television because she doesn't have the energy or the interest to deal with them. She has a job as a residential care counselor for disturbed teenagers, when she's so screwed up herself it's a miracle she's not dead. And yet, she presents all this with barely a hint of real self-reproach or guilt.

Having said all that, I must admit that this is probably the most honest depiction of anorexia and bulimia I've read, because Rivera is so open. Her recovery is realistically slow and prone to backsliding, and the difficulty of that endeavor is made agonizingly clear by the long central section of the memoir. If you want to learn the scientific and medical facts about eating disorders, this book is definitely not for you. But if you want to get a sense of what it feels like to live with this illness, Insatiable is probably a great resource.… (mehr)