An Apple a Day

April 15, 2013
British journalist Woolf documents her struggle with anorexia. Expanding on her weekly columns for the Times (London), the author chronicles her affliction and her work to overcome it. By her early 30s, she had stabilized after 10 years of starving herself, rising from a frighteningly low weight of 77 pounds to a merely painfully thin 105. She yearned to start a family, and she knew her boyfriend was right when he told her she needed to give up running and start eating more if she wanted to get pregnant. But she just wasn't sure she could do it. In this heartfelt look at the causes of her eating disorder, Woolf emphatically states that her anorexia was not the result of striving to look good based on unrealistic media images but rather a mental illness based on her need for control. She admits that, deep down, a part of her wanted to remain sick: "I needed to be visibly thin; in some strange way I needed the chaos inside my head to show on the outside." Woolf reveals how she avoided food or any social situation at which she might have to eat, while at the same time obsessively exercising and never slowing down. Step by step, she changed her behavior; she frankly discusses which therapies worked for her and which didn't, though she declares herself open to the potential merits of each for other anorexics. As Woolf walked through her personal process of self-discovery and change in her newspaper columns, she touched a chord with fellow sufferers, their families and their therapists, whose responses she includes here. Her perceptive and articulate account is frank about the mental torment she endured without being morose. Insightful and informative, with fresh insights into the nature of eating disorders.

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May 1, 2013
Unlike too many books about anorexia, this one vividly conveys what it's like for someone to starve the body on purpose. It helps that the author, a British newspaper columnist and the great-niece of Virginia Woolf, is a skilled writer who battled the disease for many years. As the title of the memoir suggests, she could subsist on just an apple a day. At five feet six, her weight125 to 135 pounds before anorexiadrops as low as 77 pounds. By the present day, she is up to 105 pounds and finally menstruating again after a decade without a period. Fortunately, Woolf gets lots of support and encouragement from her wonderful boyfriend, Tom, and from close friends and family who help her deal with questions like, How does anyone handle food without spiraling out of control into gluttony and obesity? She does a good job of explaining how an anorexic worries that if she relaxes the rules, she will be insatiable. An insightful and fascinating read for everyone, whether they've been touched by eating disorders or not.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)