TITLE: The Weight of Being
AUTHOR: Kara Richardson Whitely
GENRE: Memoir
RATING: 3.5 stars
I read this author's first book and found it inspirational, so I was a little disappointed with this one.
While her first book was all about empowerment and discovering yourself, this one is all about EVERYONE else in her life. I do recognize that eating disorders affect just about everyone in the person's life and it is important to reflect that and understand how they are impacted. For this, I give the author full credit. She wasn't afraid to confront what her food issues are doing to her family.
Having said that though, I worried that she basically put everyone's feelings above her own ALL THE TIME. Frankly, nobody came across as particularly nice or even encouraging in this story. Her husband basically doesn't want to deal with any of it, so he ends up coming off a bit selfish and Kara's mother needs to be told that she is needed by her daughter, which is sad.
This book feels as though everything that is wrong in Kara's life and family is because she is overweight. I understand that Kara would think this, but I would have killed for ONE member of her family to tell her "we will support you and your decisions" and "not everything that is going wrong in our lives is because you are overweight".
The most interesting aspects for me are the running commentaries in Kara's mind, as she tries to fit these emotions and reflection into her reality of day to day life - something that I believe every binge eater does. The emotions and thoughts that came through Kara were scary, deep and honest. This is the Kara that I liked in the first book.
Overall, I am left somewhat let down. I wanted more Kara and her thoughts, her ambitions and her hopefulness.
No comments:
Post a Comment