Books I've read: Elena Vanishing

 

This is another of the books I stumbled upon on the Libby app when I finished something else I was reading.  It's a memoir, written by a mother and daughter team about the daughter's struggle with anorexia. I read a lot of books like this in the late '80s and early '90s, but it's been a long time since I read a new anorexia book.

Elena is kind of the perfect child.  An over-achiever who has her goal of being a nurse firmly entrenched and does everything she can to ensure she gets there.  She's studies hard, volunteers at the hospital and makes sure every minute of her day is used productively.  The only thing that isn't perfect, is her body and when she turns her determination, focus and over-achieving nature to that, she's as successful at losing weight as she is at everything else.

When the book starts, Elena is already deep in the throes of anorexia.  It started when she was away at boarding school, out of sight of her parents, so by the time she goes back to living with them again, the behaviors and the secrecy surrounding them are well entrenched.  Lying is a constant thing, telling her parents she's eating elsewhere as a way to avoid family mealtimes at home.  

The problem is, not eating is starting to make Elena sick.

When she complains of chest pains, her mother takes her to a doctor and the extent of her weightloss and the effects of her binging and purging become coming to light.  She's shipped back to the States to a hospital specializing in eating disorders, but this. is only the beginning of the journey for Elena.

The book follows her through her last year of high school and her attempts to go to college to get her nursing degree.  She goes through treatment after treatment, yet the voice in her head is stronger than any therapy and she finds herself at its mercy again and again, her face back in a toilet bowl and her body on the verge of collapse time and time again.

This was a particularly harrowing book because of how often Elena failed to get better.  Most other anorexia books I've read almost make the doctors saints in the way they get their patients through their treatment and back to health.  The doctors here fail as often as Elena does, and with each failure, she becomes more resitant to treatment or any kind of help.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed this one, but having lived for over 30 years with a friend who suffers from an eating disorder and has failed treatment more times than I can count, I feel like this is a very realistic look at what it feels like to be locked into a disease that's literally consuming you.  So if you're into that...

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb: 

Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.

Told entirely from Elena's perspective over a five-year period and co-written with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena's memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease, and a must read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder.