Brave Mom Writes "Brave Girl Eating"

This is, emphatically, not the type of book I typically select.  In fact, I've been seeing it on the library new book shelf for the last couple of weeks, and passing it by.  However, this week I took it out, and read it, and now I'm writing about it.  In part, this is my way of marking Mother's Day on my blog (why not?), but the impetus to actually read this book came from the fact that I was recently touched, quite indirectly, by the death of a friend's friend who was rumored to have suffered from anorexia most of her short life.
What I know about anorexia is fairly limited -- it's taught in the Abnormal Psychology class that was a requirement; nowadays most schools try to educate their female students about eating disorders, but this was not something that was talked about -- not out loud -- when I was a teenager.  It is also poorly understood; not just by the layman, but by experts as well.  The theories I learned in college are no longer in vogue and have been replaced by a new set, perhaps more valid, perhaps not.
Harriet Brown pens this memoir of her experiences with her daughter, Kitty, with remarkable aplomb.  What must have been a gut-wrenching experience for her comes through so remarkably and believably, the reader wants to reach through the pages and hug her.  Once Brown comes to the realization that her daughter has this terrible illness, she casts around for ways to help her.  Her choices at the time boil down to sending her away to a specialized residential clinic, or keeping her hospitalized on an outpatient basis.  Brown, helped by her sympathetic and ultra-competent pediatrician, decides on another path -- Family-Based Treatment, or the Maudsley approach.  This entails the support of the entire family, and their goal is to get Kitty to eat, whatever it takes.  This is much, much harder than it sounds.  At times, Brown writes of anorexia as a demon that has inhabited her daughter; she tries desperately to take her daughter's aggressive anxiety and separate it from the daughter she loves so much and whose life she actually saves.  Yes, saves -- this painful and wretched ordeal, calorie by calorie, saves Kitty's life, and gradually she begins to emerge whole again.
As a mother, I cried for Harriet Brown as I read her book, because (although I pray that I will never be tested) any mother should hope to do the right thing, as she did, even though it was so desperately hard.  The FBT was hard on Brown, it was terrible for her husband, it was traumatic to Kitty's younger sister, and it almost completely shattered any semblance of normal family life.  However, as a mother, she knew that this was her job, and that Kitty's mother, father, and sister were the ones to bring her back and rid her of the demon anorexia.  Anorexia has cruel statistics -- close to 20 percent of anorexics die, according to Brown, half of those from suicide.  Harriet Brown and her family continue to battle these statistics, as anorexia can be a lifetime disease, and they refuse to allow their child to become one of the 20 percent.

Gosh, what a downer.  I'll get a bit more cheerful now, and introduce another new book that I read over the weekend.  A Jane Austen Education:  How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter is pure fun for the Austen lover.  One of the only negative things about Austen is that she wrote only six books, and Janeites who finish all six are left with a craving for more.  This has led to a small industry in Austen copycats, mysteries featuring Austen characters (cringe), Austen sequels (gag), and Austen spoofs (actually, some of these aren't bad).  This isn't one of the above list.  This is the nonfictional account of William Deresiewicz, who started off his adult life as an immature, obnoxious pseudo-intellectual.  Forced to read Austen in college, he slowly comes to the realization that it is not chick-lit, it is quite relevant, and it helps him gradually reorient himself and become, in a word, a mentsh.  This is an entertaining and light read, and it has a lovely happy ending.  What more could you ask?