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Nervosa
Unflinchingly honest and darkly humorous, Nervosa is a graphic memoir about disordered eating, chronic illness, and a profound relationship with hope.
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder. It is not a phase, a fad, or a choice. It is a debilitating illness manifested in a distorted relationship with food but that actually has more to do with issues of control. It is often a puzzle for doctors, therapists, parents, and friends. And so those who suffer from it are belittled, or tragically misunderstood, not only by society but by the healthcare system meant to treat it.
Nervosa is a no-holds-barred, richly textured portrait of one young woman’s experience. In her vividly imagined retelling, Hayley Gold lays bare a callous medical system seemingly disinterested in the very patients it is supposed to treat. And traces how her own life was irrevocably damaged by both the system and her own disorder. With brutal honesty and witty sarcastic humor, Gold offers a remarkably candid exploration of the search for hope in the darkness.
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder. It is not a phase, a fad, or a choice. It is a debilitating illness manifested in a distorted relationship with food but that actually has more to do with issues of control. It is often a puzzle for doctors, therapists, parents, and friends. And so those who suffer from it are belittled, or tragically misunderstood, not only by society but by the healthcare system meant to treat it.
Nervosa is a no-holds-barred, richly textured portrait of one young woman’s experience. In her vividly imagined retelling, Hayley Gold lays bare a callous medical system seemingly disinterested in the very patients it is supposed to treat. And traces how her own life was irrevocably damaged by both the system and her own disorder. With brutal honesty and witty sarcastic humor, Gold offers a remarkably candid exploration of the search for hope in the darkness.
230 pages, Paperback
First published April 11, 2023
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362 people want to read
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December 10, 2024
***SPOILERS HIDDEN***
Nervosa is a sequential-art memoir about regular girl Hayley Gold and her struggle to recover from anorexia. She was a severe case, committed to residential eating-disorders clinics starting in her early teens and continuing into her college years. Her memoir mainly shares what life was like in the clinics.
As a reader unfamiliar with these clinics, I found Nervosa an interesting exposé. I’ve assumed such clinics have decent success rates, but I was never sure whether Gold’s miserable experience was typical of these places or whether Nervosa is just an exposé of some particularly bad ones. Gold wasn’t abused, but she didn’t receive effective treatment; she never felt understood; and some nurses and aides didn’t take their job seriously. It’s a discouraging portrayal.
For readers who had anorexia I imagine Nervosa will be either triggering or comforting. The depictions are detailed and frank, and overall this is a sad memoir. Gold’s life growing up was soured by a brutish father who was emotionally abusive to her but especially to her mother, and she sometimes felt frustrated that her mom would tolerate the abuse rather than seek a divorce. Then she entered treatment, where her life just morphed into another kind of awful.
In treatment Gold was understandably angry, and that anger manifested as constant sarcasm and bitterness. I felt bad for all she went through, but I didn’t especially like her despite really wanting to. She addresses her reader as “Stupid Reader.” She’s generally misanthropic. Recalling a frustrating appointment with an orthopedist whom she finds cold, she says, “ . . . I didn’t bother replying because, after thinking about it, I realized that though people are stupid, really stupid, at least they can get it through their thick skulls that you need to eat to live . . .” About her nutritionist and psychologist she says, “Now they could go about their sunny lives, bitching and moaning about slow elevators and unattractive lobbies to clients who would always say ‘Good’ when greeted with ‘How are you?’” Regular people she sees at Gramercy Park are “vapor-huffing, kombucha-chugging assholes.”
She was judgmental of other kids living at the facility. She loathed every medical professional she interacted with, which were a great many, from nurses to doctors to nutritionists. She was disdainful of the psychologists she saw. She refused the psychiatric medication that would have quieted the obsessive, anxious thoughts that helped fuel her anorexia. All the tensions largely stemmed from a staunch unwillingness to get better. To me, recovering from an eating disorder looks a lot like recovering from alcoholism: One has to want to recover for treatment to work. Gold’s parents were the ones who admitted her to the clinic; ideally (though not realistically given her young age) Gold would have admitted herself. To avoid gaining weight at the clinic, she cheated in all kinds of ways, some inventive, as did all the kids there.
I did understand where Gold was coming from, and her memoir does a good job highlighting how girls’ and women’s health problems too often get dismissed as anxiety or aren’t properly treated. Additionally, some sexism runs through anorexia treatment, as an absurdly large number of medical professionals presented the ability to become pregnant as motivation to recover. No doubt Gold was suffering from depression too, and her self-hatred caused her to put up a wall. But even while keeping all that in mind I found it hard to read page after page of contempt for people trying to help her recover from an extremely difficult illness to treat, one she was determined not to recover from. I’m curious about what it’s like on the other side of the desk; a memoir from a doctor specializing in eating-disorders treatment could be enlightening.
Nervosa shares a certain reality very well, but what it does best is show how horrible anorexia is. Treatment is intense, unpleasant, and sometimes painful, and anorexia’s toll on the body is a slow death. The disorder taxes the heart, and those with extreme cases often die from cardiac arrest. Gold’s heart wasn’t in good shape, but the problem bugging her most and really scaring her was osteoporosis. Interestingly, she didn’t draw herself looking emaciated except in one panel when her teen self catches her skeletal reflection in a window and for the first time sees what others see. Still, that wasn’t motivation. Anorexia must be connected to body dysmorphic disorder because Gold was incapable of seeing the reality of her body.
Like many memoirs Nervosa seems more catharsis for the author than help and comfort for readers who suffer, or suffered, from anorexia. The disorder doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and Gold has a lot of childhood psychological pain to confront so she can move forward. I think the memoir would be effective as a deterrent to developing anorexia, though. Even in our body-positive times, thinness remains the desired standard, with larger sizes considered a deviation rather than just another size. But Nervosa sucks the glamour right out of the thinness ideal.
If Nervosa were fiction, it would end differently—but that isn’t to say it ends on a bad note. Just the existence of this memoir, an accomplishment that probably required a lot of energy, is a sign that her future is finally getting brighter.
Nervosa is a sequential-art memoir about regular girl Hayley Gold and her struggle to recover from anorexia. She was a severe case, committed to residential eating-disorders clinics starting in her early teens and continuing into her college years. Her memoir mainly shares what life was like in the clinics.
As a reader unfamiliar with these clinics, I found Nervosa an interesting exposé. I’ve assumed such clinics have decent success rates, but I was never sure whether Gold’s miserable experience was typical of these places or whether Nervosa is just an exposé of some particularly bad ones. Gold wasn’t abused, but she didn’t receive effective treatment; she never felt understood; and some nurses and aides didn’t take their job seriously. It’s a discouraging portrayal.
For readers who had anorexia I imagine Nervosa will be either triggering or comforting. The depictions are detailed and frank, and overall this is a sad memoir. Gold’s life growing up was soured by a brutish father who was emotionally abusive to her but especially to her mother, and she sometimes felt frustrated that her mom would tolerate the abuse rather than seek a divorce. Then she entered treatment, where her life just morphed into another kind of awful.
In treatment Gold was understandably angry, and that anger manifested as constant sarcasm and bitterness. I felt bad for all she went through, but I didn’t especially like her despite really wanting to. She addresses her reader as “Stupid Reader.” She’s generally misanthropic. Recalling a frustrating appointment with an orthopedist whom she finds cold, she says, “ . . . I didn’t bother replying because, after thinking about it, I realized that though people are stupid, really stupid, at least they can get it through their thick skulls that you need to eat to live . . .” About her nutritionist and psychologist she says, “Now they could go about their sunny lives, bitching and moaning about slow elevators and unattractive lobbies to clients who would always say ‘Good’ when greeted with ‘How are you?’” Regular people she sees at Gramercy Park are “vapor-huffing, kombucha-chugging assholes.”
She was judgmental of other kids living at the facility. She loathed every medical professional she interacted with, which were a great many, from nurses to doctors to nutritionists. She was disdainful of the psychologists she saw. She refused the psychiatric medication that would have quieted the obsessive, anxious thoughts that helped fuel her anorexia. All the tensions largely stemmed from a staunch unwillingness to get better. To me, recovering from an eating disorder looks a lot like recovering from alcoholism: One has to want to recover for treatment to work. Gold’s parents were the ones who admitted her to the clinic; ideally (though not realistically given her young age) Gold would have admitted herself. To avoid gaining weight at the clinic, she cheated in all kinds of ways, some inventive, as did all the kids there.
I did understand where Gold was coming from, and her memoir does a good job highlighting how girls’ and women’s health problems too often get dismissed as anxiety or aren’t properly treated. Additionally, some sexism runs through anorexia treatment, as an absurdly large number of medical professionals presented the ability to become pregnant as motivation to recover. No doubt Gold was suffering from depression too, and her self-hatred caused her to put up a wall. But even while keeping all that in mind I found it hard to read page after page of contempt for people trying to help her recover from an extremely difficult illness to treat, one she was determined not to recover from. I’m curious about what it’s like on the other side of the desk; a memoir from a doctor specializing in eating-disorders treatment could be enlightening.
Nervosa shares a certain reality very well, but what it does best is show how horrible anorexia is. Treatment is intense, unpleasant, and sometimes painful, and anorexia’s toll on the body is a slow death. The disorder taxes the heart, and those with extreme cases often die from cardiac arrest. Gold’s heart wasn’t in good shape, but the problem bugging her most and really scaring her was osteoporosis. Interestingly, she didn’t draw herself looking emaciated except in one panel when her teen self catches her skeletal reflection in a window and for the first time sees what others see. Still, that wasn’t motivation. Anorexia must be connected to body dysmorphic disorder because Gold was incapable of seeing the reality of her body.
Like many memoirs Nervosa seems more catharsis for the author than help and comfort for readers who suffer, or suffered, from anorexia. The disorder doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and Gold has a lot of childhood psychological pain to confront so she can move forward. I think the memoir would be effective as a deterrent to developing anorexia, though. Even in our body-positive times, thinness remains the desired standard, with larger sizes considered a deviation rather than just another size. But Nervosa sucks the glamour right out of the thinness ideal.
If Nervosa were fiction, it would end differently—but that isn’t to say it ends on a bad note. Just the existence of this memoir, an accomplishment that probably required a lot of energy, is a sign that her future is finally getting brighter.
June 28, 2023
Whip smart, hilarious and infuriatingly sad.
Triggering, I would say especially for people with anorexia and any eating disorder, suicidal ideation, and those in particularly difficult family relationships. I’m thinking that it might also be appealing and even useful for people who have OCD and maybe for some with all/any of the above.
I thought I’d seen poor care and ineffective treatment but reading about some of what happened here made me feel depressed and angry.
The ending was rather abrupt and while I think it was realistic (and I’ve read that there might be a sequel) I did not find it fully satisfying.
There is an unflinching look at the consequences of long term malnutrition. There is also a look at how hard it often is to recover from an eating disorder/mental health problem.
I enjoyed reading it. I loved the artwork and loved the writing. It was engrossing and powerful and hard to put down.
I recommend this book to all doctors and all therapists and hospital staff, especially those working with people of all ages who have eating disorders, OCD and mood disorders.
Triggering, I would say especially for people with anorexia and any eating disorder, suicidal ideation, and those in particularly difficult family relationships. I’m thinking that it might also be appealing and even useful for people who have OCD and maybe for some with all/any of the above.
I thought I’d seen poor care and ineffective treatment but reading about some of what happened here made me feel depressed and angry.
The ending was rather abrupt and while I think it was realistic (and I’ve read that there might be a sequel) I did not find it fully satisfying.
There is an unflinching look at the consequences of long term malnutrition. There is also a look at how hard it often is to recover from an eating disorder/mental health problem.
I enjoyed reading it. I loved the artwork and loved the writing. It was engrossing and powerful and hard to put down.
I recommend this book to all doctors and all therapists and hospital staff, especially those working with people of all ages who have eating disorders, OCD and mood disorders.
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April 28, 2023Content warning: Extensive discussion of EDs, mental health, and recovery
In Nervosa, author and artist Hayley Gold explores how her struggle with anorexia has informed her life. From age twelve, she follows her time in and out of treatment facilities, in and out of doctors' offices, and in and out of mental health, and all the myriad ways these activities have changed her. She also looks critically at the opposite: what aspects of her life informed her ED. In doing so, she shares not only her story, but so much of herself.
So much of her soul.
It is a challenging read, for sure. Difficult moments are often interrupted for asides both insightful and humorous - it was reminiscent in a way of the style of Marissa Moss's Amelia's Notebook. Just the same, Gold reveals her darkest, most private thoughts without further commentary, just so we know such notions, such hard streaks, exist. Not just in her, but in all of us.
If you're in a good place to read such content, Nervosa will reward you. There's comfort to be found in reading someone's journey to the other side, no matter how rocky their road is. It serves to remind us all that we have equal capacities to reach dark places, but also for hope.
No matter how lost we are.
In Nervosa, author and artist Hayley Gold explores how her struggle with anorexia has informed her life. From age twelve, she follows her time in and out of treatment facilities, in and out of doctors' offices, and in and out of mental health, and all the myriad ways these activities have changed her. She also looks critically at the opposite: what aspects of her life informed her ED. In doing so, she shares not only her story, but so much of herself.
So much of her soul.
It is a challenging read, for sure. Difficult moments are often interrupted for asides both insightful and humorous - it was reminiscent in a way of the style of Marissa Moss's Amelia's Notebook. Just the same, Gold reveals her darkest, most private thoughts without further commentary, just so we know such notions, such hard streaks, exist. Not just in her, but in all of us.
If you're in a good place to read such content, Nervosa will reward you. There's comfort to be found in reading someone's journey to the other side, no matter how rocky their road is. It serves to remind us all that we have equal capacities to reach dark places, but also for hope.
No matter how lost we are.
April 14, 2025
UPDATE after posting on another app and getting a response from the pub:
My problem is that the author is not clear about her *stance* on recovery.
In the ED community, many folks are pro-recovery and, even in the throws of ED behavior, still voice that recovery is good, healthy, and the end goal. ED stories become potentially dangerous when someone is ambiguous about being pro or anti recovery.
———
Sigh. I was visibly distressed while reading this graphic memoir. When my friends asked me what I didn’t like about it, my response was, “I don’t think it should have been a book”. I’ll try to explain my thought-process below:
I think memoirs about recovering from mental illness are very important for reducing stigma and also helping those struggling find inspiration/solidarity. If done the wrong way, I think memoirs about recovery can do more harm than good. This is where my main problem with NERVOSA lies— it is not actually a memoir about recovery.
I went into NERVOSA expecting the narrator/author to end the book as someone in recovery or, at least, pro-recovery. I was expecting an overall message of hope and inspiration. I expect this in most recovery memoirs— the ending message of “you’re not alone in your struggle and I am on my way out of this darkness to somewhere healthier” is the *point* of most recovery memoirs I read. NERVOSA’s ending, though, is ambiguous about where the author is on her journey with an ED. More so, it is ambiguous about the author’s *stance* on ED recovery, which is a red flag for me.
I have been recovered from my ED for over a decade. I want to make it clear that NERVOSA did not trigger me. (Over the course of the book, the author pokes fun at triggers, so I feel like her hypothetical rebuttal to my review would be to dismiss me as triggered). I think one of the most dangerous things a recovery memoir can do is be ambiguous about its overall message.
In my opinion, if someone struggling with an ED read NERVOSA, I’m not sure they’d be convinced to try recovery or, worse, that recovery is even a positive thing at all. Unfortunately, this is why I’m giving it a one star rating.
Further note: the narrator uses the r-slur as an insult, which I found weird for a book published in 2023.
My problem is that the author is not clear about her *stance* on recovery.
In the ED community, many folks are pro-recovery and, even in the throws of ED behavior, still voice that recovery is good, healthy, and the end goal. ED stories become potentially dangerous when someone is ambiguous about being pro or anti recovery.
———
Sigh. I was visibly distressed while reading this graphic memoir. When my friends asked me what I didn’t like about it, my response was, “I don’t think it should have been a book”. I’ll try to explain my thought-process below:
I think memoirs about recovering from mental illness are very important for reducing stigma and also helping those struggling find inspiration/solidarity. If done the wrong way, I think memoirs about recovery can do more harm than good. This is where my main problem with NERVOSA lies— it is not actually a memoir about recovery.
I went into NERVOSA expecting the narrator/author to end the book as someone in recovery or, at least, pro-recovery. I was expecting an overall message of hope and inspiration. I expect this in most recovery memoirs— the ending message of “you’re not alone in your struggle and I am on my way out of this darkness to somewhere healthier” is the *point* of most recovery memoirs I read. NERVOSA’s ending, though, is ambiguous about where the author is on her journey with an ED. More so, it is ambiguous about the author’s *stance* on ED recovery, which is a red flag for me.
I have been recovered from my ED for over a decade. I want to make it clear that NERVOSA did not trigger me. (Over the course of the book, the author pokes fun at triggers, so I feel like her hypothetical rebuttal to my review would be to dismiss me as triggered). I think one of the most dangerous things a recovery memoir can do is be ambiguous about its overall message.
In my opinion, if someone struggling with an ED read NERVOSA, I’m not sure they’d be convinced to try recovery or, worse, that recovery is even a positive thing at all. Unfortunately, this is why I’m giving it a one star rating.
Further note: the narrator uses the r-slur as an insult, which I found weird for a book published in 2023.
July 20, 2023
A grueling and exacting graphic memoir about eating disorders. Hayley Gold drags the reader into the trenches of the mental health system as she wages combat with the often despicable people who are supposed to be helping her. In the interest of fairness, she brutally presents the despicable aspects of her own personality, pushing my ability to empathize past the limits at times.
Dense and draining, it took me several days to grapple with this book, and even looking at it now pisses me off in so many different ways I know I can't fairly judge it . . . but yeah, I'll still put a star rating on it, dead in the middle between loving and hating it.
The one place where Gold loses me is in the illustrated avatar she uses for herself. Despite all her honesty throughout the book about her health issues, she depicts herself with an actual anorexic appearance only once in the entire book. I sort of get the choice, going for that one shocking moment, but it hit me more as deceptive or misleading to have her character appear wholly unaffected by her disorder -- appearing the same weight throughout the rest of the book from the first page to the last.
Dense and draining, it took me several days to grapple with this book, and even looking at it now pisses me off in so many different ways I know I can't fairly judge it . . . but yeah, I'll still put a star rating on it, dead in the middle between loving and hating it.
The one place where Gold loses me is in the illustrated avatar she uses for herself. Despite all her honesty throughout the book about her health issues, she depicts herself with an actual anorexic appearance only once in the entire book. I sort of get the choice, going for that one shocking moment, but it hit me more as deceptive or misleading to have her character appear wholly unaffected by her disorder -- appearing the same weight throughout the rest of the book from the first page to the last.
May 22, 2023
This is a touching, detailed memoir on the author's own struggles with anorexia, and her experiences in treatment facilities, which were sometimes helpful and frequently not.
July 15, 2023
A graphic memoir about the author's struggle with anorexia nervosa. In painstaking detail, she describes her stays in various hospitals and clinics, and countless doctor, nutritionist, and therapist visits. She discusses the dysfunction of her family relationships, her love of puzzles, numbers, and words, and art and poetry. What I found most interesting is how she depicts herself in the artwork as looking "normal," albeit on the thin side, while her situation was life or death; in other words, she doesn't show herself as emaciated, which I'm sure she was. A sad story to be sure, but there is some hope at the end.
May 31, 2023
Wow! Nervosa is the best medical memoir graphic novel that I have read.
Gold really laid it all out. It was a memoir that held little to nothing back; I appreciate the vulnerability Hayley Gold showed with this level of honesty.
I learned a lot about the treatment of patients with eating disorders. Not just the medical treatments, but the emotional and psychological treatments. And how these 'treatments' need to be re-examined. Anorexia has deeper roots and just telling patients they must eat for their own good - is akin to telling a true alcoholic to just stop drinking - or, I'd even say, a cancer patient to just think positive thoughts to get rid of a tumor.
Highly recommend for adult or teen readers.
Read Advanced Copy via Edelweiss. Nervosa is now available - published April 4, 2023
Gold really laid it all out. It was a memoir that held little to nothing back; I appreciate the vulnerability Hayley Gold showed with this level of honesty.
I learned a lot about the treatment of patients with eating disorders. Not just the medical treatments, but the emotional and psychological treatments. And how these 'treatments' need to be re-examined. Anorexia has deeper roots and just telling patients they must eat for their own good - is akin to telling a true alcoholic to just stop drinking - or, I'd even say, a cancer patient to just think positive thoughts to get rid of a tumor.
Highly recommend for adult or teen readers.
Read Advanced Copy via Edelweiss. Nervosa is now available - published April 4, 2023
July 1, 2024
I'd give this a 4.5 alix at 22 might of read this but alix ages 12-16 was the one truly reading this The one who struggled so bad with a ED this story should of been longer, Hayleys story broke me made me laugh and made me want to hug her it broke my heart when Hannah told Hayley that they shouldn't see eachother because its triggering like girl what? She needed help.
The art also was so beautiful I recommend everyone to read this but take care of yourself
The art also was so beautiful I recommend everyone to read this but take care of yourself
August 30, 2025
If you're still living it, we can't expect you not to tell your story right? You don't always cleanly make it to the other side right? How can you say recovery is good when you haven't done it yet?
What is even triggering, anyways? And whose responsibility is it?
I'm glad I read this. I want to be somebody too. I think you're somebody for making this graphic novel. I'm still working on being somebody.
What is even triggering, anyways? And whose responsibility is it?
I'm glad I read this. I want to be somebody too. I think you're somebody for making this graphic novel. I'm still working on being somebody.
May 22, 2023
MAJOR tw for graphic descriptions of eds/ed treatment. it’s one of the better adult graphic novels I’ve read recently, but certainly not worth triggering yourself over. be safe out there 🫡
May 30, 2023
definitely very hard to read at times, keeps things honest and real to her experiences.
March 10, 2023
Wow. This book had me engrossed from the first page. Though I’ve seen many tv shows and books tackle eating disorders, few are as candid as Gold’s account of her own decades-long struggle with anorexia. Though this comes off as a young adult novel at first, halfway through the book it becomes abundantly clear that this is very pointedly NOT a YA novel. Though anorexia is popularly viewed as a disorder that predominantly affects young girls, this novel makes it clear that it is more than just a “phase” which is what many people view it as (doctors included). While I highly recommend this read, much of the content in this book is highly triggering for those who have a history of disordered eating or self harm so proceed with caution.
January 18, 2024
I would be remiss to not mention that those that are still struggling in the midst of an ED or with a history of ED may find this book very difficult (potentially triggering) to read.
That aside, Hayley does an incredible job opening up the world of a person in a very active ED to those who may not understand from a first person experience. This has not been my own struggle, but I have some close friends that have gone through similar experiences as Hayley.
Hoping for a sequel one day to hear the rest of the story for Hayley as she continues bringing her unique and beautiful storytelling to this world.
That aside, Hayley does an incredible job opening up the world of a person in a very active ED to those who may not understand from a first person experience. This has not been my own struggle, but I have some close friends that have gone through similar experiences as Hayley.
Hoping for a sequel one day to hear the rest of the story for Hayley as she continues bringing her unique and beautiful storytelling to this world.
June 15, 2025
2 1/2 stars
It was ok. Way too long and definitely too wordy. Cute graphics throughout the book and I enjoyed her alter ego.
For the rest of the review, visit my Vlog at:
https://youtu.be/_OebhhKLxKI
Enjoy!
It was ok. Way too long and definitely too wordy. Cute graphics throughout the book and I enjoyed her alter ego.
For the rest of the review, visit my Vlog at:
https://youtu.be/_OebhhKLxKI
Enjoy!
July 23, 2023
This was a rough topic matter to read about, especially towards the end as she wanted solutions for her symptoms but didn’t want to treat her anorexia. An interesting but mildly frustrating read.
September 14, 2023
While not a perfect book I couldn't put Nervosa down until I finished and even then I think it will stay with me a long time. It was very interesting to see the head space of someone with anorexia nervosa exactly from their point of view. Would highly recommend.
June 22, 2024
Overall review: I loved this book! Nervosa is an autobiographical account of Hayley Gold's battle with anorexia and journey with receiving medical treatment for that and complications she develops (osteoporosis and neuropathy). The book format is graphic novel/comic, periodically broken up with paragraphs for transitions in the story. The illustrations are wonderfully detailed, down to subtle changes in each character's facial expression and body language, and the book is full of visual symbolism and metaphor, such as colors (red for memories and blue for Hayley's inner-dialogue body double that accompanies her throughout the middle of the book, which at first seemed like her eating disorder voice or self-critic, and then seemed more like her authentic self, which threw me off a bit), butterflies to represent numbers that cause eating disorder anxiety, and night and daybreak (Hayley sought refuge by running away from home at night as a kid - the night sky was the only presence that Hayley could express her feelings to and be seen by. She also uses the metaphor of the night "cursing" her to represent her unmet need to be understood taking the form of anorexia. Daybreak is used to represent hope - Hayley watched the sunrise and heard the morning birdsong when she was trapped in the hospital and this reminded her of moments when she was happy, like picking pumpkins or looking at Christmas lights, and helped her believe that there would be good times again). Hayley tells her story with wit, dark humor, and irony. She is honest about the ugliest thoughts and fears that underlie her eating disorder, which I really appreciated because it showed me that someone else out there was living with the same gnarly thoughts that I have and was still able to do something with their life (become a successful author). I especially related to the experience she portrayed of using the eating disorder as a means of avoiding decision-making due to fear of failure from making the "wrong" decision, and the experience she had where she realized she stayed stuck because she was trying to move forward and live in the past at the same time. Personally, I found it therapeutic to read because the author gave me words for my own cognitive distortions and maladaptive coping mechanisms that I didn't previously have words to describe, but it was also upsetting to be reminded of my own insecurities. As a person trying to be in recovery from anorexia, I felt triggered by the author's illustrations of her body, but I say this as a word of caution to other people in recovery, not as a critique of the author's work, since I believe it's her right to draw her body as she sees it.
Summary: As a child, Hayley Gold had a lot on her shoulders, dealing with her parents' unhealthy marriage and an emotionally abusive father. She learned from a young age, from her dad, about what determined smart versus dumb and what rendered you unlovable (fatness). Hayley's dad Jeff constantly complained about Hayley's mom Vivian's weight and what he perceived to be her character flaws, as well as policed Vivian's eating. Jeff also criticized Hayley's preferences and choices from a young age, saying things like "You never try anything new! You're just like your mom" and "Don't you want to be a REAL woman?" Hayley lived in fear of her father's angry outbursts. She was lonely too - her precocious vocabulary and distaste for pizza parties and dancing were not well-received by her peers, and she couldn't make any friends. A blip in Hayley's cholesterol led her to start reading food labels, and down the rabbit hole of counting and food rules she went. This spiraled into an eating disorder because it got to the point where she couldn't break her rules and was refusing the dinners her mom cooked.
One day, Vivian took 12-year-old Hayley to the doctor, and they immediately sent her to an inpatient eating disorder treatment center. This begins Hayley's years-long odyssey of treatment, which Hayley chronicles the absurdities and indignities of through comic. Eventually, she was stepped down to the day patient program, but her eating disorder was able to be more sneaky that way. After her parents and doctor found out that she'd been hiding food at home instead of eating it, she was sent to a different hospital in Westchester. At the new hospital, Hayley didn't even get to eat real food - patients who needed to restore a certain amount of weight were expected to drink a nasty high-calorie formula called NuBasics 6 times a day. In this hospital, patients never got to talk with a therapist or the doctors that prescribed copious amounts of medication, and they never even got group therapy. One day, with no notice, Hayley was pulled into a room, restrained, and nurses put in a nasogastric feeding tube. The tube was painful in her throat, made it hard to breathe, and the tube feedings led her to throw up periodically. Much to Hayley's relief, her insurance cut out after 2.5 months and she was discharged.
From this point, the author jumps ahead in time to when she's 17 years old and still struggling with anorexia years of treatment later. The pressure to make a decision about college and her future beyond, combined with Hayley’s parents, peers, and treatment team making her feel as if she didn’t matter, led her to feel “fatter” than ever, which worsened her eating disorder and landed her in Westchester again. Because Hayley was in treatment, her mom applied to colleges for her. Hayley used to like to draw and write, so she committed to an art school.
From the start of orientation, Hayley struggled. She wasn’t able to make friends with other students and she was still so sick she could hardly walk around the hilly campus. A weigh-in at the student health center led the school to force Hayley out on a medical leave of absence. When Hayley got home, she agreed to see a doctor, who then granted her a “temporary guardian” - a lawyer who made all medical decisions for her and had her admitted to a hospital in New Jersey. In the hospital, for the first time, Hayley had a doctor who treated her like a competent human and cared about her as an individual - Dr. Alder listened to her, he wanted to know what the eating disorder did for her, he recognized her intelligence and sense of humor, he let her make a fall pumpkin display in the lobby even though it was against hospital rules, and he literally picked her up after she fell, which Hayley’s father didn’t do when she fell as a little kid. Hayley loved Dr. Alder, and though Hayley wasn’t quite ready to recover for herself yet, she wanted to do it for him. I related a lot to this - like Hayley, I didn’t feel seen and often felt disempowered throughout receiving care for my eating disorder, so when I got a good doctor or therapist, it would give me hope and even make me idolize them and feel personally motivated to get better for them or their approval.
Eventually, Hayley was discharged from the hospital in New Jersey, her legal guardianship was revoked, and she transferred to a new art school in Manhattan. However, her passion for art was still gone and she still struggled to fit in with her classmates. The school and teachers were incompetent at accommodating her disabilities (anorexia and also osteoporosis at that point). Hayley also began experiencing debilitating neuropathy, to the point that she could hardly walk some days. After graduation, Hayley acquired a full-time job of going from doctor to doctor trying to get help for the neuropathy and bone fractures, but many of them were dismissive of her, only paid attention to her anorexia, prescribed drugs that didn’t end up helping, and ended up referring her to other specialists. Even after Hayley gained some weight, she was constantly in pain.
Often, Hayley still felt hopeless and questioned whether she should go on, but she started to get some of her spark back and continued taking steps toward recovery. She started enjoying writing and art again, and the idea that she could use her voice to show everyone who she really was through her writing and art was what gave her hope. She began to write instead of restrict as a coping mechanism after a particularly triggering Thanksgiving visit from her parents. One of Hayley’s doctors, Dr. Willow, let Hayley start seeing her for support more regularly after Hayley’s therapist dropped her. Dr. Willow challenged Hayley’s eating disorder, made Hayley feel cared for, and encouraged her to recover to have a future. The book ended in a hopeful scene where Hayley went out for a night walk and realized that the night and the day are continuous, one and the same, just as expressing what she really thinks and feels can coexist with hope and recovery. She took a pill from her bottle of Nortryptiline, the first line medication for neuropathy which she’d previously avoided due to fear of the weight gain side effect.
Summary: As a child, Hayley Gold had a lot on her shoulders, dealing with her parents' unhealthy marriage and an emotionally abusive father. She learned from a young age, from her dad, about what determined smart versus dumb and what rendered you unlovable (fatness). Hayley's dad Jeff constantly complained about Hayley's mom Vivian's weight and what he perceived to be her character flaws, as well as policed Vivian's eating. Jeff also criticized Hayley's preferences and choices from a young age, saying things like "You never try anything new! You're just like your mom" and "Don't you want to be a REAL woman?" Hayley lived in fear of her father's angry outbursts. She was lonely too - her precocious vocabulary and distaste for pizza parties and dancing were not well-received by her peers, and she couldn't make any friends. A blip in Hayley's cholesterol led her to start reading food labels, and down the rabbit hole of counting and food rules she went. This spiraled into an eating disorder because it got to the point where she couldn't break her rules and was refusing the dinners her mom cooked.
One day, Vivian took 12-year-old Hayley to the doctor, and they immediately sent her to an inpatient eating disorder treatment center. This begins Hayley's years-long odyssey of treatment, which Hayley chronicles the absurdities and indignities of through comic. Eventually, she was stepped down to the day patient program, but her eating disorder was able to be more sneaky that way. After her parents and doctor found out that she'd been hiding food at home instead of eating it, she was sent to a different hospital in Westchester. At the new hospital, Hayley didn't even get to eat real food - patients who needed to restore a certain amount of weight were expected to drink a nasty high-calorie formula called NuBasics 6 times a day. In this hospital, patients never got to talk with a therapist or the doctors that prescribed copious amounts of medication, and they never even got group therapy. One day, with no notice, Hayley was pulled into a room, restrained, and nurses put in a nasogastric feeding tube. The tube was painful in her throat, made it hard to breathe, and the tube feedings led her to throw up periodically. Much to Hayley's relief, her insurance cut out after 2.5 months and she was discharged.
From this point, the author jumps ahead in time to when she's 17 years old and still struggling with anorexia years of treatment later. The pressure to make a decision about college and her future beyond, combined with Hayley’s parents, peers, and treatment team making her feel as if she didn’t matter, led her to feel “fatter” than ever, which worsened her eating disorder and landed her in Westchester again. Because Hayley was in treatment, her mom applied to colleges for her. Hayley used to like to draw and write, so she committed to an art school.
From the start of orientation, Hayley struggled. She wasn’t able to make friends with other students and she was still so sick she could hardly walk around the hilly campus. A weigh-in at the student health center led the school to force Hayley out on a medical leave of absence. When Hayley got home, she agreed to see a doctor, who then granted her a “temporary guardian” - a lawyer who made all medical decisions for her and had her admitted to a hospital in New Jersey. In the hospital, for the first time, Hayley had a doctor who treated her like a competent human and cared about her as an individual - Dr. Alder listened to her, he wanted to know what the eating disorder did for her, he recognized her intelligence and sense of humor, he let her make a fall pumpkin display in the lobby even though it was against hospital rules, and he literally picked her up after she fell, which Hayley’s father didn’t do when she fell as a little kid. Hayley loved Dr. Alder, and though Hayley wasn’t quite ready to recover for herself yet, she wanted to do it for him. I related a lot to this - like Hayley, I didn’t feel seen and often felt disempowered throughout receiving care for my eating disorder, so when I got a good doctor or therapist, it would give me hope and even make me idolize them and feel personally motivated to get better for them or their approval.
Eventually, Hayley was discharged from the hospital in New Jersey, her legal guardianship was revoked, and she transferred to a new art school in Manhattan. However, her passion for art was still gone and she still struggled to fit in with her classmates. The school and teachers were incompetent at accommodating her disabilities (anorexia and also osteoporosis at that point). Hayley also began experiencing debilitating neuropathy, to the point that she could hardly walk some days. After graduation, Hayley acquired a full-time job of going from doctor to doctor trying to get help for the neuropathy and bone fractures, but many of them were dismissive of her, only paid attention to her anorexia, prescribed drugs that didn’t end up helping, and ended up referring her to other specialists. Even after Hayley gained some weight, she was constantly in pain.
Often, Hayley still felt hopeless and questioned whether she should go on, but she started to get some of her spark back and continued taking steps toward recovery. She started enjoying writing and art again, and the idea that she could use her voice to show everyone who she really was through her writing and art was what gave her hope. She began to write instead of restrict as a coping mechanism after a particularly triggering Thanksgiving visit from her parents. One of Hayley’s doctors, Dr. Willow, let Hayley start seeing her for support more regularly after Hayley’s therapist dropped her. Dr. Willow challenged Hayley’s eating disorder, made Hayley feel cared for, and encouraged her to recover to have a future. The book ended in a hopeful scene where Hayley went out for a night walk and realized that the night and the day are continuous, one and the same, just as expressing what she really thinks and feels can coexist with hope and recovery. She took a pill from her bottle of Nortryptiline, the first line medication for neuropathy which she’d previously avoided due to fear of the weight gain side effect.
Read
June 1, 2023I am not giving this a star rating...I don't think I could put a rating on such a personal and raw experience such as this one.
October 20, 2025
So this shot right to the top of my list of favorite graphic memoirs. Gold does a phenomenal job with just about everything on display here.
Nervosa can be a real gut punch of a book to get through, with its detailing of anorexia, OCD, depression, medical gaslighting, and parents who needed to do better.
The book is also injected with dry, dark humor that worked really well for me. I also just really love the intentionality with the color choices and commitment to giving everything and almost everyone depth.
Nervosa can be a real gut punch of a book to get through, with its detailing of anorexia, OCD, depression, medical gaslighting, and parents who needed to do better.
The book is also injected with dry, dark humor that worked really well for me. I also just really love the intentionality with the color choices and commitment to giving everything and almost everyone depth.
October 8, 2023
Incredible.
I learned a lot about anorexia, and overall I really appreciated the angle Gold brought to living with and receiving treatment for an eating disorder. Lots of thoughtful elements about treatment implementation (e.g., staff failing to competently deliver interventions), doctor-client rapport (e.g., the final doctor's last interaction with Gold broke my heart in a really good/effective way), the experience of receiving mental health treatment for the majority of one's life (e.g., loved her dream conversations with her younger self), culture of residential treatment (e.g., the cliques/competition), iatrogenic treatments (so! much! to! talk! about! here!), person vs. disorder (i.e., the depiction of "night" and the eating disorder emerging to be a separate but linked character was effective), and impacts of long-term malnutrition (e.g., neuropathy, osteoporosis).
The book is just really thoughtful; it covers a lot but is still cohesive. Gold's depiction of her first time having enough estrogen to experience a period (later in life) was especially enlightening, and a good example of a scene where the storytelling is simultaneously sad, infuriating, and genuinely funny. Gold's decisions about how to depict her body in the illustrations was very thoughtful (i.e., showing her body as something that looks "healthy," then showing a quick glimpse of what others see). Her depiction of her parents was both critical and overall quite loving (especially for her mom, with the illustrations of + names for different flowers at the beginning of each chapter). I could go on; there are just so many good scenes and - even more - the scenes/pieces of the story really tie back to each other in a layered and rewarding way (both in terms of language/quotes, and subtle visuals).
There is a very good balance here of the book being artsy (e.g., lots of metaphor) and having a cool-indie vibe, while also being approachable. In light of this combo/balance, the Emily Dickinson poems at the beginning of each chapter was a very good fit (and, it was really beautiful how the use of Dickinson's poetry ties into Gold's short-lived but long-lasting relationships with other people in treatment). Relatedly, this is definitely on the denser end of the graphic novel spectrum (i.e., for me, this wasn't a read-in-one-short-sitting book), and when I finished this book I really felt like I had read a complete novel. Very cool.
The illustrations don't really do the story justice, in that they seem a bit unfinished, or like they're storyboard plans rather than a final illustration. That being said, what is included in the illustrations, the flow of them, and the overall page-to-page planning of the content/art is very good. Not sure what the situation was with this graphic novel, but I'd especially like to see a graphic novel by this author with maybe just a bigger budget or some kind of partnership with the illustrations. But I am very ignorant to how this all works.
I learned a lot about anorexia, and overall I really appreciated the angle Gold brought to living with and receiving treatment for an eating disorder. Lots of thoughtful elements about treatment implementation (e.g., staff failing to competently deliver interventions), doctor-client rapport (e.g., the final doctor's last interaction with Gold broke my heart in a really good/effective way), the experience of receiving mental health treatment for the majority of one's life (e.g., loved her dream conversations with her younger self), culture of residential treatment (e.g., the cliques/competition), iatrogenic treatments (so! much! to! talk! about! here!), person vs. disorder (i.e., the depiction of "night" and the eating disorder emerging to be a separate but linked character was effective), and impacts of long-term malnutrition (e.g., neuropathy, osteoporosis).
The book is just really thoughtful; it covers a lot but is still cohesive. Gold's depiction of her first time having enough estrogen to experience a period (later in life) was especially enlightening, and a good example of a scene where the storytelling is simultaneously sad, infuriating, and genuinely funny. Gold's decisions about how to depict her body in the illustrations was very thoughtful (i.e., showing her body as something that looks "healthy," then showing a quick glimpse of what others see). Her depiction of her parents was both critical and overall quite loving (especially for her mom, with the illustrations of + names for different flowers at the beginning of each chapter). I could go on; there are just so many good scenes and - even more - the scenes/pieces of the story really tie back to each other in a layered and rewarding way (both in terms of language/quotes, and subtle visuals).
There is a very good balance here of the book being artsy (e.g., lots of metaphor) and having a cool-indie vibe, while also being approachable. In light of this combo/balance, the Emily Dickinson poems at the beginning of each chapter was a very good fit (and, it was really beautiful how the use of Dickinson's poetry ties into Gold's short-lived but long-lasting relationships with other people in treatment). Relatedly, this is definitely on the denser end of the graphic novel spectrum (i.e., for me, this wasn't a read-in-one-short-sitting book), and when I finished this book I really felt like I had read a complete novel. Very cool.
The illustrations don't really do the story justice, in that they seem a bit unfinished, or like they're storyboard plans rather than a final illustration. That being said, what is included in the illustrations, the flow of them, and the overall page-to-page planning of the content/art is very good. Not sure what the situation was with this graphic novel, but I'd especially like to see a graphic novel by this author with maybe just a bigger budget or some kind of partnership with the illustrations. But I am very ignorant to how this all works.
June 15, 2024
One one hand, this is a truly engrossing and well told story that reveals why anorexia is so devastating and difficult to treat or recover from.
On the other hand, I found it difficult to get through this graphic memoir. I cared enough that I was compelled to finish it to find out how things turned out. Yet by halfway through I felt thoroughly frustrated, and not only because of her continuing and painful struggles. Instead I think my problem with the work was Gold’s antagonistic attitude towards the reader, whom she addresses as “Stupid Reader.”
Gold’s assertions of wanting to show the world what was inside her are at odds with the way she suggests we readers could not understand anyway because we readers, who have taken the time to read her work, listen to her words, see the world through her eyes in an attempt to truly understand her, are just too “stupid” to do so.
Her negative attitude towards everyone in her life and everyone she meets feels more justified, from her perspective, anyway. These people may be well-intentioned, but she makes a case that they have all let her down in monumental ways.
I have enjoyed harrowing memoirs when the writer develops a relationship with the reader that is both honest and welcoming. And, the writer needs to be honest with herself, not necessarily when the story happened but at least in its telling. I feel like this is just not the case in this memoir.
Aside from expressing her scorn for the reader, Gold makes another choice I found increasingly unsettling as I read along: to visually depict herself as conventionally thin, even though we come to understand that this is not what her body would look like.
In one panel only, she reveals a partial view of her body that shows how skeletal she really was. For the rest of the memoir she draws herself in gently curving (not angular) lines and the relative size of her silhouette is thin but not alarmingly so. Perhaps this is meant to help the reader ignore her outer appearance to try to get us to understand her inner experience. One issue is this explanation gives readers little credit for being able to see her outer self and still listen to her inner story.
More problematically, the way she depicts her body, for me, has the effect of denying and erasing the physical toll of anorexia. Yes, she *tells* us of the effects on her body, but her body continues to show up page after page as if she were not emaciated. This makes it seem like anorexia kept her thin rather than desperately ill.
It is true that a person can be deathly ill from anorexia in a larger body, and this causes its own pain. But that is not Gold’s story. If she had wanted to make a clear distinction between how she saw herself and what the reality was, she had already built in an alter ego character who could represent one or other of these realities.
I am interested in how other readers felt about Gold’s choice in how to draw herself.
On the other hand, I found it difficult to get through this graphic memoir. I cared enough that I was compelled to finish it to find out how things turned out. Yet by halfway through I felt thoroughly frustrated, and not only because of her continuing and painful struggles. Instead I think my problem with the work was Gold’s antagonistic attitude towards the reader, whom she addresses as “Stupid Reader.”
Gold’s assertions of wanting to show the world what was inside her are at odds with the way she suggests we readers could not understand anyway because we readers, who have taken the time to read her work, listen to her words, see the world through her eyes in an attempt to truly understand her, are just too “stupid” to do so.
Her negative attitude towards everyone in her life and everyone she meets feels more justified, from her perspective, anyway. These people may be well-intentioned, but she makes a case that they have all let her down in monumental ways.
I have enjoyed harrowing memoirs when the writer develops a relationship with the reader that is both honest and welcoming. And, the writer needs to be honest with herself, not necessarily when the story happened but at least in its telling. I feel like this is just not the case in this memoir.
Aside from expressing her scorn for the reader, Gold makes another choice I found increasingly unsettling as I read along: to visually depict herself as conventionally thin, even though we come to understand that this is not what her body would look like.
In one panel only, she reveals a partial view of her body that shows how skeletal she really was. For the rest of the memoir she draws herself in gently curving (not angular) lines and the relative size of her silhouette is thin but not alarmingly so. Perhaps this is meant to help the reader ignore her outer appearance to try to get us to understand her inner experience. One issue is this explanation gives readers little credit for being able to see her outer self and still listen to her inner story.
More problematically, the way she depicts her body, for me, has the effect of denying and erasing the physical toll of anorexia. Yes, she *tells* us of the effects on her body, but her body continues to show up page after page as if she were not emaciated. This makes it seem like anorexia kept her thin rather than desperately ill.
It is true that a person can be deathly ill from anorexia in a larger body, and this causes its own pain. But that is not Gold’s story. If she had wanted to make a clear distinction between how she saw herself and what the reality was, she had already built in an alter ego character who could represent one or other of these realities.
I am interested in how other readers felt about Gold’s choice in how to draw herself.
December 21, 2023
I do not know how I feel about this book. It's a harrowing read that reminds me of "Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy, in that it's unrelenting and there is no easy resolution. Unlike that book, this is in comics format which I find more appealing and easier (somehow emotionally) to read.
Gold has severe anorexia, a bully for a father, a high intelligence, and very few positive relationships.
I loved the use of color. Sometimes the text was too small for my eyes. There were a few ableist slurs (moron, r-slur). The poetry framing each section did nothing for me but I'm not a poetry person. I liked the pressed flower illustrations but the font identifying them was impossible to read.
Where the book succeeds the most (for me) is in revealing the horrors of so-called treatment for eating disorders, which serve to make things worse for our narrator. To put teenage girls with ED together in one unit allows them to share tips and tricks, to normalize their behaviors, to compete with each other. When the staff has them go around and talk about their progress, this serves to publicly shame them in front of their peers. Hayley is at one point not allowed to draw (a positive coping technique). Instead of eating tasty food, they are given foul NuBasics drinks. Staff are at turns indifferent, incompetent, and cruel. Doctors are dehumanizing and one of them assaults her. Her peers tell her, what is the point of reporting the assault? They don't believe us anyway. The girls' bodies and behaviors are under constant surveillance by mis-trusted people.
In this carceral environment, is it any surprise that the girls try to subvert authority? Of course they are going to double down on behaviors that give them a sense of control.
I would recommend this for people working in the field and those interested in graphic medicine, and I would say that it's best for a mature reader who can contextualize some of Gold's writing. For example, she's crabby and hates people, but lacks the insight or distance to realize that this is because she's under-fed and that (at the end of the book, now in her 20s) she is finally starting puberty. She doesn't seem to understand how to separate herself from her parents (ie drawing boundaries), which is difficult for many people but especially difficult if you have a severe illness and may be financially dependent on them (she doesn't talk about money except in terms of insurance).
"Lighter than my Shadow" by Katie Green is a better graphic memoir on the same topic (but I haven't read that one in a while). In both books, competent treatment for this difficult disease is elusive.
Book was borrowed from my excellent local public library system.
Gold has severe anorexia, a bully for a father, a high intelligence, and very few positive relationships.
I loved the use of color. Sometimes the text was too small for my eyes. There were a few ableist slurs (moron, r-slur). The poetry framing each section did nothing for me but I'm not a poetry person. I liked the pressed flower illustrations but the font identifying them was impossible to read.
Where the book succeeds the most (for me) is in revealing the horrors of so-called treatment for eating disorders, which serve to make things worse for our narrator. To put teenage girls with ED together in one unit allows them to share tips and tricks, to normalize their behaviors, to compete with each other. When the staff has them go around and talk about their progress, this serves to publicly shame them in front of their peers. Hayley is at one point not allowed to draw (a positive coping technique). Instead of eating tasty food, they are given foul NuBasics drinks. Staff are at turns indifferent, incompetent, and cruel. Doctors are dehumanizing and one of them assaults her. Her peers tell her, what is the point of reporting the assault? They don't believe us anyway. The girls' bodies and behaviors are under constant surveillance by mis-trusted people.
In this carceral environment, is it any surprise that the girls try to subvert authority? Of course they are going to double down on behaviors that give them a sense of control.
I would recommend this for people working in the field and those interested in graphic medicine, and I would say that it's best for a mature reader who can contextualize some of Gold's writing. For example, she's crabby and hates people, but lacks the insight or distance to realize that this is because she's under-fed and that (at the end of the book, now in her 20s) she is finally starting puberty. She doesn't seem to understand how to separate herself from her parents (ie drawing boundaries), which is difficult for many people but especially difficult if you have a severe illness and may be financially dependent on them (she doesn't talk about money except in terms of insurance).
"Lighter than my Shadow" by Katie Green is a better graphic memoir on the same topic (but I haven't read that one in a while). In both books, competent treatment for this difficult disease is elusive.
Book was borrowed from my excellent local public library system.
September 25, 2023
A difficult read about a difficult subject, Hayley Gold's severe struggles with anorexia nervosa. Family dusyfunction, multiple hospitalizations where her angry is not quite balanced out with her sense of humor, though there is some bleak humor throughout. Gold doucments terrible experiences at hime and in medical care, and she's hard on everyone, including readers. She's not a warm person, even yelling at her readers at one point. She ios hard on mpst people, actually, so she doesn't always go for the entertainment or deep connections with her readers.
Of course a story about a still common disprder like this will be hard to read, though I do think it will be uesful for people suffering with this and related disorders, and for families living with these folks. I was not a fan of the art, even the coloring pushed me away, and she writes panels with a lot of words in them. Too many words, I say! So I have had it around for a while and was not inclined to read it many times because it was physically as hard to read for me as was the hard sad angry story itself. I just know she is calling me an asshole as she reads my review! I actually imagined it! So let me quickly say I wish you well, Hayley, and I hope you get better and people get better because of your book. You've had a hard life. And you are really smart and articulate about what you have experienced.
One thing I found weird is that there is only one image in the book of her emaciated self, in a mirror. Mis-seeing yourself, your body, is part of this (obviously neurological, so misperceptual) disorder, I know. So that is an interesting part of the book, as is a shadow/doppleganger Hayley that we see with her everywhere. This wil be a useful part of the literature of graphic medicine.
Of course a story about a still common disprder like this will be hard to read, though I do think it will be uesful for people suffering with this and related disorders, and for families living with these folks. I was not a fan of the art, even the coloring pushed me away, and she writes panels with a lot of words in them. Too many words, I say! So I have had it around for a while and was not inclined to read it many times because it was physically as hard to read for me as was the hard sad angry story itself. I just know she is calling me an asshole as she reads my review! I actually imagined it! So let me quickly say I wish you well, Hayley, and I hope you get better and people get better because of your book. You've had a hard life. And you are really smart and articulate about what you have experienced.
One thing I found weird is that there is only one image in the book of her emaciated self, in a mirror. Mis-seeing yourself, your body, is part of this (obviously neurological, so misperceptual) disorder, I know. So that is an interesting part of the book, as is a shadow/doppleganger Hayley that we see with her everywhere. This wil be a useful part of the literature of graphic medicine.
April 4, 2025
This is an EXCELLENT graphic novel about eating disorders and how the American mental health system is both inept and indifferent to helping people. Hayley Gold wisely decides to approach her disorder by breaking it down conceptually. There are elegant lines and carefully arranged panels. But there's also a color code here: green to reflect the real, blue to reflect Gold's darker elements, red for flashbacks. And even though there are a few Bechdelian floor plans amidst the offering, Gold manages to exhume some surprising truths, vital small moments, and poignancy from this formalism. The group therapy counselor more occupied with Jumble than the patients, the two bottles of Jergen's lotion parked beneath armpits to artificially inflate a body weigh-in, a creepy male nurse. All of this contributes to a vital personal story that, in chronicling the world so prodigiously, reveals quite a bit about what Gold went through.
September 24, 2024
This book triggering for lots of reasons: disordered eating, family trauma, suicidal ideation, medical trauma - but I don’t give it less of a rating for that. I think my difficulty came from it being rather wordy with excerpts of poems throughout, making the memoir come off as actually a bit pretentious. Hayley is extremely unhappy, and honestly, I feel like she kind of does make it everyone’s problem. Many side characters were reduced down to very few sentences that were very often if not always negative towards Hayley. Because it’s a memoir, rather than feeling pity towards her, after a while, I questioned if these interactions were exaggerated.
In the end, I’m thankful that Hayley had an interaction with an individual she felt genuinely cares about her; I think everyone deserves that.
But I probably won’t re-read this one.
In the end, I’m thankful that Hayley had an interaction with an individual she felt genuinely cares about her; I think everyone deserves that.
But I probably won’t re-read this one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 5, 2024
You follow Hayley as she develops anorexia at a young age due to weight shaming her dad would constantly do to her mom when she was a kid.
You follow her through her teen and adult years in and out of hospitals from about the age of 8 due to the timeline and age of her writing and her struggles in the badly ran and managed mental health hospitalization system we have in the US still barely recovering from the asylum days.
As someone in active recovery/relapse with ARFID anorexia (I do eat it’s just abnormally/concerning small portions of food) and developed then binge eating due to my recovery, I felt seen for once in media. I saw myself in her and I recommend this book to anyone you know is recovering or you yourself have or are struggling with anorexia in any form because there’s a quote in it that made me cry pretty hard
You follow her through her teen and adult years in and out of hospitals from about the age of 8 due to the timeline and age of her writing and her struggles in the badly ran and managed mental health hospitalization system we have in the US still barely recovering from the asylum days.
As someone in active recovery/relapse with ARFID anorexia (I do eat it’s just abnormally/concerning small portions of food) and developed then binge eating due to my recovery, I felt seen for once in media. I saw myself in her and I recommend this book to anyone you know is recovering or you yourself have or are struggling with anorexia in any form because there’s a quote in it that made me cry pretty hard
September 8, 2023
While it felt fully authentic and accurate to some of my own experiences or other counts of EDs I have read, I was thrown off by the poems between each chapter because they didn’t feel like they were about anything, so it was disruptive and felt like they didn’t belong. I also did not like how it just ends mid sentence, and without entering a real stage of progress. The Max ends a couple chapters sooner saying she thinks she just used a coping mechanism, but we don’t get to extrapolate and grow from that point. This just felt like it was cut short and needed to follow a road of recovery in some way. There is also just so much going on on each page, that the style and flow of the panels were not ideal.
June 4, 2024
I really loved this! I read this over 2 sittings (and think it would've been better if I could have just finished it all in one) and while I wanted more explicit resolution at the end, I really enjoyed it. It deals very heavily with her eating disorder, hospitalization, and underlying family dysfunction, and I really liked how she portrays everything, especially her understanding and demonstration of her own mindset. I also liked that it covered such a long period of time (relative to other books, as this covers at least 10 years) and also covered long term effects of her anorexia. I do wish there was more resolution at the end, but I think that shows how much I enjoyed the book that I wanted more.
March 4, 2024
Fantastic autobio graphic novel about dealing with anorexia. Worth mentioning: I've had a couple psych ward stays under my belt. It was for a completely different diagnosis, but nevertheless some of it felt a little familiar. I think the saddest part was how everyone staying in the inpatient wards fought their treatment plans with every fiber of their being. Making it worse, in her program, they were all forced to subsist entirely on this disgusting sludge called NuBasics that was designed to rapidly put on weight, but tastes horrible. I felt so terrible for everyone going through what they did.
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