Reviewed in ForeWord Magazine

By Allison Block
June 18, 2004

The eyes may mirror the soul, but flesh and bone speak its greatest truths. In luminous, imagery-rich prose, the author tells of her twenty-year battle with the eating disorder known as anorexia nervosa. From pretty teenager pursued by boys, to bride, to tenured professor, to mother of two, De Pree battled with her body, refusing the daily nourishment required to sustain it (at five feet, ten inches, she dropped as low as 110 pounds). Deprivation defined her: “My starving body had become my norm, the light canvas upon which my intellect was drawn, a transparent structure upon which to lay my thought.”

A professor of French at Atlanta’s Agnes Scott College, De Pree details her personal history, beginning with the innocent child watching a movie in which a female prisoner is raped repeatedly with a broomstick: “Something in my eight-year-old mind decided I had better avoid being hurt like that,” she remembers. “Even if it meant that I must remain a girl.”

De Pree finds the roots of her disorder within society and herself: the media’s equation of thinness with beauty, her fear of growing into womanhood, her own preoccupation with perfection. At times, she was able to break free, albeit temporarily, from the pattern of self-induced starvation. She spent her junior year of college in Paris, where the sensuousness of the city, its museums, bustling streets, and rich, mellifluous language, rekindled her appetite both for food and for life.

But for De Pree, anorexia is like a driver’s “blind spot,” an ever-present threat that is hidden from view. When she returned to the States, married her sweetheart Christopher after graduation, and moved to New Mexico, where their first daughter was born, her obsession with thinness returned. It was only after the birth of her second child, when De Pree sank into a severe depression, that she found a psychiatrist able to lead her out of the darkness. He prescribed medication and, at the same time, encouraged her to write about her experiences.

An award-winning poet, De Pree draws parallels between writing verse and shedding pounds. Both involve a paring down to the barest minimum: “Hipbones like the edges of wings. Ribs like a row of bare trees. Collarbones forming that letter Y. Knees and elbows knobby circles of bone.” By turns harrowing and hopeful, this is a cautionary tale for every woman convinced beyond all reason that she can never be too thin. De Pree also provides a reading guide, inviting further exploration of this complex, emotionally charged issue.

ForeWord Magazine
June 18, 2004