Elena DunkleReseñas

An eye opening memoir detailing the intense struggle with an eating disorder that is sure to speak to and educate you.

TW: Anorexia, purging, self-harm, loss of pregnancy, suicide, death

Elena Dunkle aided by her mother, Claire Dunkle does an honest job at sharing her fight with Anorexia. It’s not east and it’s not short.

Everyone’s experience with an ED is different and their Road to recovery takes different paths. The author had a long and extremely daunting battle with FOOD that cost her almost everything.

How does one get to the bottom of that? Do we need to have reasons? Coming from a supportive family surely helps but how much can others help you unless you want to help yourself? The spiral of wanting to get better and realising that you are a lost cause is arduous.

‘Recovery is a path, not a destination.’

The inner-voice that keeps reminding of how you are nothing but a failure, of how you will always be a disappointment and how you will never see an end to this does not make it easy.

‘I’m part of you. I know what you’ve done. You’ll never get rid of me.’

One way to persevere is to find hope. Find something to hold on to. Find something that reminds you that you are loved. Find something that you love unconditionally.

Its not easy. It is not always at arms length. Elena vanishing shines light on the importance of finding the ‘Right help’. It’s a memoir that shows us the good and the bad, the boring and the interesting. It shows us what it is without glorifying any part of it and personally, that’s what spoke to me the most.

You will be left with knowledge and hopefully, empathy to help the brave souls like Elena on their journey after reading her story.

I teach high school English, mostly to juniors and seniors. My students LOVE this book. It is constantly checked out of my classroom library. Of course, they like stories about real people--particularly the struggles that people go through.

An incredibly honest memoir about a young woman's struggle with her eating disorder. This book was so raw and heartbreaking that I could only manage to read small sections at a time. Overall, an incredibly inspiring and hopeful read that I would wholeheartedly recommend to the eating disorder community.

This story brings the reader into the mind of a girl, Elena, struggling with anorexia. It is a great inside look on this mental disorder for mature age groups while it features explicit incidents and sexual encounters. Elena's story is inspiring to those struggling with mental disorders because she does fight the voice in her head and starts to take control over her life. This memoir has made me rethink anorexia as so much more and deeper than just an obsession with being skinny. Though this story can be good for some people, this memoir is not sugar coated what so ever. Elena tells it like it is and even gave the true reality of how this disorder can end in death. This is not easy to read and I feel as though people with this disorder or similar disorders would be triggered by some of the writings, but this book does portray this painful truth about suffering with a mental disorder.

This book was truly eye opening. Of course, we all know about eating disorders and the pain they cause, but I've never read something this in depth and real about it. Elena mentions in her afterword that she was always reading books that were too sugar coated and hopeful or that glorified eating disorders, so she decided to write one from her experiences, and that's just what she did. I kept waiting for her to get better and recover, and as it got closer to the end I realized it wasn't going to be that easy, because life isn't that easy. The things she went through took so much strength and willpower and she was so brave to put it all out there. The book was well written and I'm so glad Elena and her mother took the time to write it because I think it's going to be important to someone in need, who thinks they're alone in their struggles, to see that someone else went through so much pain and came out on the other side that much stronger. Would definitely recommend this. It's something everyone needs to know more about.

Elena's memoir was one that was difficult to read. I checked the back of the book to ensure that it wasn't written by her mother posthumously with her diaries.
She's shockingly honest without glorifying her illness. It took her years of treatment to see her eating disorder and years more to even try to tackle it. Brave, difficult, sad, enlightening, and truthful. On her website she talks about how she's still working on her recovery every day.

Dunkle tackled the difficult task of writing about how she felt during her time with an eating disorder without glamorizing it. This was a huge achievement that made the book well worth reading.

This was a gripping story how a 13 year old developed an eating disorder after the horror of being raped. This was a emotional roller coaster and definitely had me sobbing. What a brave woman to write about such a difficult time in her life!

This is an honest and horrifying look at what eating disorders can do to a person, as well as a family. Elena’s anorexia started after being raped at 13, becoming pregnant and losing the baby. While she had OCD and some other compulsive types of behaviors, this situation did not occur until after that stressful period. It took her years and much therapy to finally deal with her issues, but she succeeded. This is a very brave look at her life.

Elena needs to know her number, the all-important number. It tells her how good she is, how worthy she is. It makes her relieved if she is stressed. But when she is in the hospital, they don't let her see her number. They just make her eat and eat, and won't let her exercise. They try to tell her how much she is hurting her body by restricting her eating, but it does not matter to Elena. She doesn't see the problem. She just wants to be her best, and being her best does not include eating. As Elena bounces in and out of hospitals and therapy, her life continues to spiral out of control, at least to outsiders. To her, this is normal. But she finally does recognize she has a problem - and gets the help she so desperately needs. I like how this story is told; we can feel the desperate need of Elena to know her weight, but we don't find out the actual number, because it really doesn't matter to the story overall - what matters is the feeling of desperation. We don't get descriptions of how she looked, nor are there any photos as part of the book, but again, even though I was interested in that, it didn't take away from the feelings Elena had while she was in the midst of her darkest time. I liked how she showed her transition from not believing she had a problem to understanding the depth of what was happening; it happened over time, as it would in life, not just in one quick chapter or overnight. I was drawn in by Elena and wanted her to get better, and cared about her life. I want to read Hope, the book by Elena's mom, to see how the perspectives compare.

(Unable to provide a proper review since I lost the book after having lost it while in the middle of reading it).

A compelling and fascinating look into the world of a young woman struggling with anorexia. This was not an easy book to read, but I think it is an important book to read. Written from Elena's perspective, the reader is allowed to "hear" the voices that Elena hears that continually tell her she is fat and worthless as well as a myriad of other negative things. It is clear that this disease is insidious and difficult to fight and by the end of the book the reader is fully aware of how overwhelming it can be to fight such a battle. I would have liked to have had some chapters written from Elena's mother's perspective just to have that added information of how the disease was really affecting the family. Overall a great read.
This review was based on a copy of the book given to me by the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

Elena Vanishing is a raw, honest look at life with an eating disorder. The way the author openly discusses what is going on in her head, how she openly admits to manipulating others, is uncomfortable, but comes across as very real. The book in no way glorifies anorexia, neither does it give a concrete plan for recovery. It is simply a memoir, and gives the reader a very accurate look at one girl's journey through her eating disorder, the trauma that contributed to it, and the fallout to her health and relationships that resulted from it. I would recommend this book to anyone that is at the beginning stages of an eating disorder, or knows someone who is suffering from one. I think it would also be a good book for young girls to read, just to gain insight into what an eating disorder can do to a person.

Note: I received a copy of this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program.

This is an amazing book describing one woman's experience with an eating disorder. The book, a collaboration between mother and daughter, is very well written and provides great insight into how an eating disorder affects not only the person who has it, but that person's family and friends as well. The afterword of the book provides information on who to contact for help if you have, or know someone who has, an eating disorder. I highly recommend this book to everyone, especially teens.

Note: LibraryThing Early Reviewer - I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a hard book to review. While it was clearly cathartic for the author to write, it does not seem to know what it wants to be for the reader. Is it a warning? A guide for others seeking help? An inside look at a disease? The author's note implies it wants to be none of these, but because it isn't guided in one of these ways, it's hard to know what to take away.

I will say that many memoirs of eating disorders really glamorize the disease and the societally desirable thinness it produces. This book is quite successful in avoiding this, which the author says is her intention. She avoids specific numbers and tactics that readers might interpret as directions. I understand this choice. It necessarily leads some segments to see under-detailed, but that cost is probably well worth it if it means more women don't use this as a manual.½

A memoir. Who knew the worst antagonist imaginable could be the voice inside your head?

Elena Vanishing is a very potent memoir of a young woman who suffered from disordered eating for many years in late adolescence and early adulthood. It's coauthored by Elena's mom, which I think helps the story along as the viewpoint is Elena's the entire time, but doesn't suffer from her biases throughout the book.

I think the authors tried to write a book that would be as minimally triggering, or how-to, as possible, but I think it's almost impossible for that to happen in an ED memoir. There's a lot in here that could be used as an instruction manual, and I found it to be strongly triggering, even though numbers and quantities and calories and pounds were never discussed.

Definitely worth a read if you're interested in seeing inside the mind of somebody with anorexia. If you suffer from disordered eating and don't want to take the chance, maybe skip this until you're further along in your recovery.½

I'm going to be honest and say the first couple chapters of this book had me nervous. It's difficult to write a book about illness without glorifying said illness and I was worried that this story wouldn't cross the thin line from glorification to warning. As a person who has struggled with mental illness (still do some days) and eating issues, the first couple chapters were a bit triggering. Luckily, I pushed through and found myself pleasantly surprised that Elena's story was, far more than glorifying, honest and eventually hopeful, just like struggling with your health in real life. I appreciated the author's note in the end, though I would have preferred it in the beginning. On top of the honesty, I found the book to be very well-written without being too wordy or over-complicated. Descriptions of trauma were clear without making me relive my own trauma. I don't know if I've ever read a recovery memoir this honest.

This book made me cry, everything that Elena went through. This book gives you a look at the life of a strong family and what a mother will do for her daughter. I recommend this book to all the girls and women out there.

Elena Vanishing was an honest depiction of a woman suffering with anorexia. It was honest, raw, heartbreaking, and uplifting. I think that anyone who reads it will have a better understanding what people dealing with anorexia are going though both mentally and physically. A sad, but inspiring read.

*Received a copy in exchange for an honest review*

I got this as an early reviewer from Library Thing. I found the memoir quite engaging. The author shared her experiences and thoughts and feelings, giving enough detail and insight as to be interesting and to keep the reader involved in the story. However, there were no truly graphic scenes or day by day minutiae to big the reader down or to allow the book to act as an "anorexia how to"- kudos. I would have liked to have learned more about the dad and Valerie, but perhaps they were not Elena's stories to tell.