Good Girls

October 1, 2022

Stand-up comic, actor (e.g., Netflix's Cobra Kai), and host of the No. 1 food podcast in the country, Green Eggs and Dan, Ahdoot uses an essay format in Undercooked to explain how food became a crutch and finally a dangerous obsession for him, starting with his brother's untimely death. Before he died of cancer, Braitman's father rushed to teach her important things like how to fix a carburetor and play good practical jokes; long after his death, she realized the cost of What Looks Like Bravery in suppressing her sorrow at his passing; following the New York Times best-selling Animal Madness. In Forager, journalism professor Dowd recalls her upbringing in the fervently Christian cult Field, founded by her domineering grandfather, where she was often cold, hungry, and abused and learned to put her trust in the natural world. Hospitalized from ages of 14 to 17 with anorexia nervosa, Freeman (House of Glass) recalls in Good Girls her subsequent years as a "functioning anorexic" and interviews doctors about new discoveries and treatments regarding the condition. In Happily, which draws on her Paris Review column of the same name, Mark uses fairytale to show how sociopolitical issues impact her own life, particularly as a Jewish woman raising Black children in the South. Philosophy professor Martin's How Not To Kill Yourself examines the mindset that has driven him to attempt suicide 10 times. Award-winning CBS journalist Miller here limns a sense of not Belonging: abandoned at birth by her mother, a Chicana hospital administrator who hushed up her affair with the married trauma surgeon (and Compton's first Black city councilman) who raised Miller, the author struggled to find her place in white-dominated schools and newsrooms and finally sought out her lost parent (60,000-copy first printing). From Mouton, Houston's first Black poet laureate and once ranked the No. 2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World (Poetry Slam Inc.), Black Chameleon relates an upbringing in a world devoid of the stories needed by Black children--which she argues women must now craft (60,000-copy first printing). A graduate of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, Mount Holyoke College, and Columbia University, Ramotwala demonstrates The Will To Be in a memoir of early hardship (her mother's first-born daughter died in a firebombing before the author was born) and adjusting to life in the United States (75,000-copy first printing). In Stash, Robbins, host of the podcast The Only One in the Room, relates her recovery from dangerous drug use (e.g., stockpiling pills and scheduling withdrawals around PTA meetings and baby showers) as she struggles with being Black in a white world. Author of the multi-award-winning, multi-award-nominated No Visible Bruises, a study of domestic violence, Snyder follows up with Women We Buried, Women We Burned, her story of escaping the cult her widowed father joined and as a teenager making her way in the world (100,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 3, 2023
Sunday Times journalist Freeman (House of Glass) chronicles her struggles with anorexia in this illuminating memoir. At 14, a classmate referred to Freeman’s body as “normal,” which sent her spiraling into disordered eating: “A black tunnel yawned open inside me, and I tumbled down it, Alice into Nowhereland.” To better understand the disorder that gripped her for more than two decades, Freeman interviews patients she came to know during her own hospitalizations, talks to doctors about treatment, and traces links between eating disorders and autism, depression, and—rather dubiously—gender dysphoria, which she suggests may be rooted in body hate the same way eating disorders are. Freeman also posits that anorexia is, in part, a way for girls to rage against enforced passivity: “It isn’t really about the food.... It’s about trying to say something without having to speak; it’s about the fear of sexualization and fear of womanhood; it’s about sadness and anger and the belief you’re not allowed to be sad and angry because you’re supposed to be perfect.” The most poignant aspects of the book, though, are personal, as when Freeman recounts her lack of close friends in adolescence. For readers wishing to understand this disease, Freeman offers valuable (if sometimes questionable) insight. The result is affecting, though uneven. Agent: Georgia Garrett, Rogers, Coleridge & White.

Starred review from February 15, 2023
Someone who fought the beast and won uses her own experience and thorough research to explain what anorexia is--and isn't. Longtime Guardian columnist Freeman, author of House of Glass, is a talented writer and researcher whose personal history with anorexia as a young woman required numerous hospitalizations. She remembers her trigger moment with absolute clarity. It was just after her 14th birthday when a classmate with very skinny legs said, "I wish I was normal like you." Having reconnected with several women she met in hospitals along the way, she pulls in their experiences, as well, explaining that "anorexia was a bomb inside us, just waiting for the right time, the single flame, the trigger." The author's thorough explanation of the disease and its treatment completely debunks many myths--e.g., "all that was needed to cure anorexia was for Kate Moss to eat some chips." A chapter called "The Theories" is a simultaneously hilarious and horrifying three-page poem that lays out "an incomplete list of reasons doctors, therapists and outsiders have given over the years for why I became anorexic." Freeman is sharp, funny, and literate. In discussing her school reading during that transitional 14th summer, she writes, "I don't blame John Fowles for my anorexia, but he did make an effective soundtrack for it." She also labels Roald Dahl "the Anna Wintour of children's literature when it comes to fatphobia" and shares crucial life wisdom from Spaceballs and Lethal Weapon. With several sources indicating an "epidemic of extreme anxiety among girls"--a 2019 study showed rates of self-harm had tripled since 2000--Freeman's insights are essential. For mothers of daughters in crisis, she offers a wise message: "Get professional help as soon as you can, and don't become her caregiver." If you need to understand anorexia, look no further. This is the book for you.

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