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This book records a life lived on a large stage, the examined life of a remarkable woman. Born into a family of larger-than-life achievements and terrible tragedy, Lucy Daniels has tried to make sense of what she experienced as an unhappy child, a miserable adolescent, and a troubled adult. Writing as a sixty-year-old woman, she characterizes her early childhood as a series of inchoate attempts to make her mother and father love her. As she recalls her earliest memories, she laudably refrains from attributing to herself as a child knowledge gained only later. It is astonishing that she recalls so much, especially in view of the memory loss associated with the many shock treatments she was subjected to as a teenage anorexic.
Her anorexia was life-threatening. Her first hospitalization for it was precipitated by her being sent home from boarding school, having starved herself down to sixty pounds despite doing excellent academic work, having many friends, and being a leader in school government. By flagging her self-destruction as more important than her achievements, the school personnel showed more concern for her as a person