I remember when The Reading Cure was published in 2018. I was drawn to its form of part-memoir, part bibliophile guide. There are lots of books like this in my experience of contemporary publishing. Cathy Rentzenbrink’s Dear Reader springs to mind, and she is blurbed on the cover of The Reading Cure. Avid readers like books about books!

I didn’t buy this book at the time it published, but now years later, I came across it again in a bookshop. It felt like a small serendipitous sign that the book was wanting me to read it, and now was the time. (I do firmly believe a book will tell you when it wants to be read.)

For me, I was more curious around the memoir part of Laura’s book, which details her diagnosis and journey of recovery from anorexia – a journey aided by reading material and how it influenced her thoughts around eating food.

I have a complex relationship with food myself, something I think a lot of us can say. I read Jennette McCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died with no real idea of who she was, (she was not in my childhood pop culture years), to gain an understanding of her bulimia. Here, with Laura’s book, I wanted to understand more about anorexia.

I don’t have anorexia, nor does my disordered eating display in the same way. That said, I do have ongoing neuroses with food. Laura’s honesty about her illness is at times very visceral, and so it should be, when dealing with such ravaging, destructive mental turmoil.

Laura falls ill at thirteen and is formally diagnosed at fifteen. However, it is not until her mid twenties that, through her love of reading, Laura coaxes herself to try foods that had long been banished from her diet. As she reads about food, recipes, and the range of emotions they attach to characters and writers, she begins a gentle exploration of her own. She looks at Dickens, the War poets, Laurie Lee, Virginia Woolf, Harry Potter and more, for inspiration.

The children’s reading section really took me back to my own childhood reading – especially Roald Dahl. I had forgotten just how much food – delicious, disgusting or downright bonkers there is to enjoy in his writing! It also highlighted how much I haven’t noticed food in my adult reading. Unless it has been something specific like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, I don’t know that I could recall vivid chapters, scenes or passages involving food in my reading. The same is true of my own creative writing – so rarely do I take time to detail a plate of food, menu, recipe etc.

What The Reading Cure did really help me to understand, is that despite what we’re constantly led to believe, anorexia is not about food. It really isn’t. But as someone who isn’t anorexic, I think it would be dangerous and remiss of me to expand on that. (You’ll have to read the book! ;))

The Reading Cure also highlighted how dangerous the ‘clean eating’ movement that swept the 2010s is to people susceptible to disordered eating. I own some of those books. I followed some of those influencers. Reading in the context of Laura’s anorexia, and how far ‘clean eating’ set her back, was like a lightbulb for me. Like, ‘duh’ how could I not have seen this would happen?

I am glad The Reading Cure found me and coaxed me into reading it. It has been a really valuable read, and once again I am prompted to get my act together and read Little Women!