Product Description

"An important book...Jenny Hendricks' diary entries speak to us directly without manipulation, but with the plain truth of who she is, and what she perceives about others...A valuable head-start to understanding one anorexic's personality." - Steven Levenkron, psychotherapist and author of "The Best Little Girl in the World". "[Jennifer Hendricks]...fought to be cured of anorexia nervosa. But as the diary she kept shows, a widespread lack of understanding about eating disorders and scattergun treatment programs make the battle almost insurmountable...a sorrow to read." - "New York Times". "Patients' voices can all too easily be forgotten in the world of mental health care, but Jenny's voice rings strong. Through this earnest and captivating exposure, her father succeeds in keeping her story alive." - David B. Herzog, M.D., president and founder of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center.This eloquently written, heart-wrenching book shares a brave but tormented young woman's candid chronicle of her long and ultimately fatal battle with the eating disorder anorexia. In "Slim to None", the late Jenny Hendricks speaks to you from her own carefully detailed personal journals - a practice suggested as treatment by one of her many doctors. Gently edited and narrated by her father, this book vividly illustrates Jenny's intense emotional struggles - her pride at improving her health clashing with her undefined guilt over eating, her internal conflict between will and reason, and the dispiriting war between self-confidence and self-doubt that plagued her.Most of all, here is an amazing account of the efforts to understand the root of an illness that continues to confound the mental-health system, even at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Jennifer Hendricks was the valedictorian of her high school class but spent most of her last five years confined in hospitals. She weighed just 45 pounds when she died at age 25.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #563546 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Review
An important book... Jenny Hendrick's diary entries speak to us directly without manipulation... A valuable head-start to understanding one anorexic's personality. - Steven Levenkron, author of The Best Little Girl in the World; Patients' voices can all too easily be forgotten in the world of mental health care, but Jenny's voice rings strong. Through this earnest and captivating exposure, her father succeeds in keeping her story alive. - David B. Herzog, M.D., president and founder of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center; [Jennifer Hendricks] at times despairing, at times hopeful, fought to be cured of anorexia nervosa, one of the disorder. But as the diary she kept shows, a widespread lack of understanding about eating disorders and scatter-gun treatment programs make the battle almost insurmountable... a sorrow to read. - New York Times

From the Back Cover

Title: Slim to None PB

Author: Hendricks

ISBN: 0071433716

Category: Psychology/Memoir

Trim Size: 5 ½ x 8 3/4

UPC: 639785384854

Price: $14.95

"An important book . . . Jenny Hendricks's diary entries speak to us directly without manipulation, but with the plain truth of who she is, and what she perceives about others . . . A valuable head-start to understanding one anorexic's personality."
--Steven Levenkron, psychotherapist and author of The Best Little Girl in the World

"[Jennifer Hendricks] . . . fought to be cured of anorexia nervosa. But as the diary she kept shows, a widespread lack of understanding about eating disorders and scattergun treatment programs make the battle almost insurmountable . . . a sorrow to read."
--New York Times

"Patients' voices can all too easily be forgotten in the world of mental health care, but Jenny's voice rings strong. Through this earnest and captivating exposure, her father succeeds in keeping her story alive."
--David B. Herzog, M.D., president and founder of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center

This eloquently written, heart-wrenching book shares a brave but tormented young woman's candid chronicle of her long and ultimately fatal battle with the eating disorder anorexia. In Slim to None, the late Jenny Hendricks speaks to you from her own carefully detailed personal journals--a practice suggested as treatment by one of her many doctors.

Gently edited and narrated by her father, this book vividly illustrates Jenny's intense emotional struggles--her pride at improving her health clashing with her undefined guilt over eating, her internal conflict between will and reason, and the dispiriting war between self-confidence and self-doubt that plagued her. Most of all, here is an amazing account of the efforts to understand the root of an illness that continues to confound the mental-health system, even at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Jennifer Hendricks was the valedictorian of her high school class but spent most of her last five years confined in hospitals. She weighed just 45 pounds when she died at age 25.

About the Author

Jennifer Hendricks was the valedictorian of her high school class but spent most of her last five years confined in hospitals. She weighed just 45 pounds when she died at age 25.

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Customer Reviews

A brilliant read.
Unlike many other books of eating disorders that appear to glamourise them, this book clearly tells us there is NOTHING good about eating disorders. Although it has a tragic ending, it is still a very important book, that conveys the clear message that eating disorders kill. For those struggling with an eating disorder themselves or have a loved one who is, it illustrates well the daily torment that these people have to go through.

hmmmmmmm ...
Very powerful, certainly ... hard not to be moved by Jennifer's ultimate death. Yet appaling as it is to say it, I didn't overly warm to her father. I felt sorry for him ... almost as though he was writing to atone for something he wasn't even clear of.

Overall, though, a piercing antidote to the plethora of anorexia "recovery" stories. Eating disorders do kill, sadly ...

An honest account
I have read quite a few Eating Disorder memoirs but this seemed to come off different to the others and somewhat more honest than the others mainly because of its diary entry format.

The diarys show how Jenny went from feeling strong and positive to suicidal and weak frequently and within one or a few days of each other. It shows her constant stuggle with herself, her mind, her feelings and her body more eloquently than most other ED books which tend to become somewhat selfindulgent - which is fair, it becomes a rather selfindulgent illness.

I tried to warm to the father throughout the book and by the end he just about had me. I did not like Dr Weintrub (sp?) from the start and most of the other doctors annoyed me just as much as they annoyed Jenny.

This book shows just how little is understood about Eating Disorders but I believe it is getting better as more and more people start to speak out about it. A very good book, if you have any experience with Eating Disorders or just an interest in finding out more I suggest giving this book a try