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Empty

A Memoir

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Empty

By: Susan Burton
Narrated by: Susan Burton
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An editor at This American Life reveals the searing story of the secret binge-eating that dominated her adolescence and shapes her still.

“Her tale of compulsion and healing is candid and powerful.”—People

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE

For almost thirty years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.

When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents’ abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But in the fallout from her parents’ breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from “peculiarity to pathology.”

Susan entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success—she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse—she’d binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again—and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to “quit food.”

Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of narrative and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation. Psychology & Mental Health Biographies & Memoirs Mental Health Thought-Provoking Psychology Adolescent Psychology Heartfelt Developmental Psychology Inspiring Health Teenagers Relationships Parenting & Families Professionals & Academics Medical

Critic reviews

“Her tale of compulsion and healing is candid and powerful.”—People

“Susan Burton’s Empty is a smart, brave gift to the world. She pulls back the curtain on an ailment all too many suffer with and often die from. Bravo!”—Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir and The Liars’ Club

“Burton’s memoir is valuable because she goes beyond simply confessing her shame; she rakes herself over the coals, and in doing so she models how anger can be used to clarify a story. Her anger gives the book its considerable power, its substantial grace and even, in the end, its meaning. Her fury is like a flashing light in a cave, or a portal. The force of it makes us not just appreciate but actually feel the force that drove her to commit her actions in the first place. The result is a book that wields a fearsome intimacy.”—Claire Dederer, The New York Times

“Residing inside all of us is a secret so fraught that it becomes unspeakable, and for Susan Burton, that secret was food: How it controlled her and how she tried to control it. How it haunted and comforted, becoming at turns her fiercest adversary and comforting companion. Empty is a tour de force of both vulnerability and strength, a memoir so unflinching and brave that it forces us to peer into our own dark places with newfound honesty and compassion. By giving voice to her shame, Burton teaches herself—and the rest of us—how to find power and freedom in the telling.”—Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“Susan Burton’s Empty is by turns touching, frightening, fiercely candid, and beautifully written. In this story of a teenager’s furtive eating disorders, Burton has sidestepped the clichés, and captured the enigma of attempting to sate, by gluttony and starvation, our human vulnerabilities.”—Jill Ciment, author of The Body in Question

“Susan Burton’s brave and candid book reveals the inner landscape of an adolescent girl, and the way the mind can be hypnotized by the idea of the body. Beautifully written, touching and intimate, Empty speaks to a secret shared by many American women.”—Roxana Robinson, author of Dawson’s Fall
Raw Honesty • Insightful Perspective • Authentic Voice • Emotional Depth • Relatable Experiences • Thoughtful Writing

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It’s wonderful to hear the book from Susan’s own voice. Her honesty with herself and her audience is remarkable.

Potently relatable and introspective

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I appreciate how elaborate this book is. I completely related to Susan’s way of thinking as a child, both related and unrelated to food, and especially in her perspectives of the tiny details. I thoroughly enjoyed listening and couldn’t put it down. I love that she was able to articulate her battles with food and her body once and for all, and I hope it liberated her rather than fed her illness. I find it only slightly triggering but only in the sense that I have an eating disorder, and I’m reading about a woman’s experience with an eating disorder. It did not trigger me in a way where it fed my illness. It did not offer tips or tricks. It did not cause harm. It was simply a very enjoyable book, that I related with. And would recommend it to others who are able and ready to read a book that was about a woman’s battle with eating disorders.

A very good book

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I wasn't sure what to expect and found her story deeply satisfying. She wasn't alone and yet, she was. She isn't me and yet, she is.

I Know Her

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I'm currently in Spain, enjoying my time here as an for a month. I felt the need for something engaging to immerse myself in. At this stage in my life, I'm open and eager to explore ED which has shaped me from age 15 to now, as I'm in my middle years. Everything she shared resonated deeply with me. I'm truly grateful she chose not to focus on the numbers on the scale because that can be triggering; instead, her honesty, intelligence, and vulnerability were incredibly powerful. Bravo to her!

This book helped me tremendously . I don’t know if I’ll ever be out of the woods. I’ll probably have distorted images of myself and peculiar relationships w/ food. I think the bottom line is her memoir gives me hope.

Brutally honest

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This is obviously a very personal work, and parts seemed to provide a detailed glimpse into what life is like for someone with an eating disorder. Other parts of the book seemed obsessively repetitious. The story ended when the author was a young adult, with little about how her eating disorder affected being a wife and mother. Other than finding an empathic analyst, it's not clear to me what an effective treatment of eating disorders involves.

A detailed glimpse into life with anorexia/bulimia

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