Reviews

As I was whisking my way through Jean Braithwaite's extraordinary memoir, I started writing down all of the reasons I admired it and found it such a joy to read. Here's but a short section of a long list: brilliant, profound, honest, funny, deeply moving, artistic triumph . . . and so on. This is one of the best memoirs I have ever read.
-Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America, The Mapmaker's Wife,  and The Anatomy of an Epidemic.

Reading this wrenching (yet beautifully restrained) memoir, I experienced that rare shock of literary recognition—Jean Braithwaite says things, publically, I was sure only I had thought in the privacy of my own mind. Anyone who has cringed when complimented for losing weight, anyone who can’t help but hear the implicit critique (Was I really that bad before?  Do you actually think I’m a better person, now?) will be profoundly moved by this book. Though her experiences with her body many seem more extreme than many people’s, Braithwaite’s story can help readers understand their own experiences—we all want to be considered desirable, and we all live in a culture that corrodes and corrupts that want.  Braithwaite’s intimately personal story contains a compelling argument: collectively, we seriously misunderstand weight loss and gain, and the error in the way we perceive what a healthful body should look like has devastating consequences. For all of us." 
-Erin Stalcup, fiction writer, author of “Gravity,” Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College

One could not hope for a more engrossing, intelligent and bracingly honest memoir on this problematic subject. I ate it up. 
-Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body and The Art of the Personal Essay, Guggenheim winner