Book Review: My Life as a Male Anorexic

✍ Scribed by Lynda Randall

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 28 KB
• Volume: 5
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1072-4133
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0968(199712)5:4<298::aid-erv211>3.0.co;2-h

✦ Synopsis

I approached this book with trepidation. Autobiographical accounts of illnessÐ although sometimes compellingÐcan leave the reader feeling that the subject's private life should not be so publicly exposed. Happily, this is not the case with Michael Krasnow's book. His book is rare in being about a male anorectic. The literature on anorexia generally excludes boys and men, thus heightening their sense of being marginalized.

Michael offers an easy-to-read, unsparing account of his 14-year battle with anorexia nervosaÐnot a guide to recovery but a description of life with severe chronic illness. He takes us through his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. His varied helpful and unhelpful experiences of hospitalization, forcible admission, and in-patient treatment are described in detail. He pays tribute to those clinicians who helped him to live with himself as he is, and not impose their expectations of a healthy life on him.

Michael gives a loving portrait of his family, particularly his parents. Both he and his clinicians reiterate the importance of his parents' unstinting support in the face of his demands and dif®culties.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in anorexia nervosa from a male perspective.