In additon to her international best-seller Madness: A Bipolar Life, Marya Hornbacher is the author of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia and a novel, The Center of Winter.
'A brave and engagingly entertaining survivor. The value of Madness is its first-hand description of bipolarity.' John Sutherland, Financial Times 'A writer's exploration of the mental illness that has defined and at times destroyed her life. "Madness: A Bipolar Life" makes the starkest fact about bipolar disorder painfully clear' Sara Keating, Sunday Business Post Praise for 'Wasted': 'A stunningly original and beautifully written book gouging deep into a gruesome subject which, by comparison, other writers have merely flirted with.' Evening Standard 'Like Plath, Hornbacher writes with a metaphoric intensity which at times seems tragically indistinguishable from the power of her drive to self-destruct. Her brutal honesty as to why it happened to her and her lack of special pleading, only adds to the essential pain of the book. If you want to understand anorexia, read this book.'Scotsman 'What marks "Wasted" out is the quality of the voice. Hornbacher is, simply, a good writer. Coolly vivid, there's an edge to her prose!Her gift for description makes even the familiar aspects of the phenomenon newly real.'Guardian Praise for 'The Centre of Winter': 'Hornbacher has created characters who are genuine, engaging, and unforgettable. Following!the acclaimed "Wasted", with this stunning debut novel, Hornbacher, who inevitably will be compared to Alice Sebold, proves herself to be a master storyteller.' Booklist (starred review) 'Hornbacher succeeds marvelously![She] constructs a kaleidoscope of speakers at times beautiful and often disturbing![An] adroit first novel.' Los Angeles Book Review
'A brave and engagingly entertaining survivor. The value of Madness is its first-hand description of bipolarity.' John Sutherland, Financial Times 'A writer's exploration of the mental illness that has defined and at times destroyed her life. "Madness: A Bipolar Life" makes the starkest fact about bipolar disorder painfully clear' Sara Keating, Sunday Business Post Praise for 'Wasted': 'A stunningly original and beautifully written book gouging deep into a gruesome subject which, by comparison, other writers have merely flirted with.' Evening Standard 'Like Plath, Hornbacher writes with a metaphoric intensity which at times seems tragically indistinguishable from the power of her drive to self-destruct. Her brutal honesty as to why it happened to her and her lack of special pleading, only adds to the essential pain of the book. If you want to understand anorexia, read this book.'Scotsman 'What marks "Wasted" out is the quality of the voice. Hornbacher is, simply, a good writer. Coolly vivid, there's an edge to her prose!Her gift for description makes even the familiar aspects of the phenomenon newly real.'Guardian Praise for 'The Centre of Winter': 'Hornbacher has created characters who are genuine, engaging, and unforgettable. Following!the acclaimed "Wasted", with this stunning debut novel, Hornbacher, who inevitably will be compared to Alice Sebold, proves herself to be a master storyteller.' Booklist (starred review) 'Hornbacher succeeds marvelously![She] constructs a kaleidoscope of speakers at times beautiful and often disturbing![An] adroit first novel.' Los Angeles Book Review
Hornbacher, who detailed her struggle with bulimia and anorexia in Wasted, now shares the story of her lifelong battle with mental illness, finally diagnosed as rapid cycling type 1 bipolar disorder. Even as a toddler, Hornbacher couldn't sleep at night and jabbered endlessly, trying to talk her parents into going outside to play in the dark. Other schoolchildren called her crazy. When she was just 10, she discovered alcohol was a good "mood stabilizer"; by age 14, she was trading sex for pills. In her late teens, her eating disorder landed her in the hospital, followed by another body obsession, cutting. An alcoholic by this point, she was alternating between mania and depression, with frequent hospitalizations. Her doctor explained that not only did the alcohol block her medications, it was up to her to control her mental illness, which would always be with her. This truth didn't sink in for a long, long time, but when it did, she had a chance for a life outside her local hospital's psychiatric unit. Hornbacher ends on a cautiously optimistic note-she knows she'll never lead a "normal life," but maybe she could live with the life she does have. Although painfully self-absorbed, Hornbacher will touch a nerve with readers struggling to cope with mental illness. (Apr.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
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