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As one might hope from a writer whose title connotes a deep respect for words, Em Farrell's book is an appreciative survey of the literature, in the course of which she carefully juxtaposes those observations and conceptualisations that square with her own experience. Next, as any serious writer on the subject must, she shows us where the work of others, even when brought into relationship with one another, falls short. Then she is ready to offer her own contributions.
If one pauses just there for a moment, one can wonder: Does anything really need to be added? And can anything be added that even begins to touch the mystery of why some people are able and willing to make free with so elemental a constituent of life as nutriment? There is, of course, always something to be added because it is so difficult to come to know many anorectic or bulimic individuals very deeply (at their best or worst they make themselves a mile wide and an inch deep) and any little bit helps. But the mystery seems very far from submitting to even a fair number of