The luminous first novel by Marya Hornbacher, the acclaimed author of "Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia," is a moving and passionate story of a death from despair -- and a stricken family's passage through grief toward the hope, solace, and understanding that waits for them somewhere beyond the center of winter.

A fascinating, highly unusual, literary novel of love, obsession and powerful women by the author of the highly acclaimed Wasted. 'All the seasons here in the north move toward their own end, except winter, which moves toward its centre and sits there to see how long you can take it.' At the centre of winter, in Motley, Minnesota, Arnold Schiller gives in to the oppressive season that reigns outside and to his own inner demons and commits suicide, leaving a devastated family in his wake. Claire Schiller, wife and mother, takes shelter from the emotional storm with her husband's parents, but must ultimately emerge from her grief and help her two young children to recover. Esau, her oldest, is haunted by the same darkness that plagued his father. At twelve years old, he has already been in and out of state psychiatric hospitals and now, with the help of his mother and sister, he must overcome the forces that drive him deep into himself. But as the youngest, perhaps, it is Kate who carries the heaviest burden. A precocious six-year-old who desperately wants to help her mother hold the family together, she will have to come to terms with the memory of her father who was at once loving and cruel. Narrated alternately by Claire, Katie and Esau, this powerful and passionate novel explores the ways in which both children and adults experience tragic events, discover solace and hope in each other, and survive. The Centre of Winter finds humour in unlikely places and evokes the north - its people and landscape - with warmth, sensitivity and insight. The story of three people who, against all odds, find their way out of the centre of winter, Marya Hornbacher's debut novel will leave you breathless, tearful, and ultimately, inspired.

A searing, unflinching and deeply moving account of Marya Hornbacher's personal experience of living with bipolar disorder. From the age of six, Marya Hornbacher knew that something was terribly wrong with her, manifesting itself in anorexia and bulimia which she documented in her bestselling memoir 'Wasted'. But it was only eighteen years later that she learned the true underlying reason for her distress: bipolar disorder. In this new, equally raw and frank account, Marya Hornbacher tells the story of her ongoing battle with this most pervasive and devastating of mental illnesses; how, as she puts it, 'it crept over me like a vine, sending out tentative shoots in my childhood, taking deeper root in my adolescence, growing stronger in my early adulthood, eventually covering my body and face until I was unrecognizable, trapped, immobilized'. She recounts the soaring highs and obliterating lows of her condition; the savage moodswings and impossible strains it placed on her relationships; the physical danger it has occasionally put her in; the endless cycle of illness and recovery. She also tackles the paradoxical aspects of bipolar disorder - how it has been the drive behind some of her most creative work - and the reality of a life lived in limbo, 'caught between the world of the mad and the world of the sane'. Yet for all the torment it documents, this is a book about survival, about living day to day with bipolar disorder - the constant round of therapy and medication - and managing it. As well as her own highly personal story, the book includes interviews with family, spouses and friends of sufferers, the people who help their loved ones carry on. Visceral and inspiring, lyrical and sometimes even funny, 'Madness' will take its place alongside other classics of the genre such as 'An Unquiet Mind' and 'Girl, Interrupted'.

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, "Wasted" is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

A classic of psychology and eating disorders, now reissued with an important and perhaps controversial new afterword by the author, Wasted is New York Times bestselling author Marya Hornbacher's highly acclaimed memoir that chronicles her battle with anorexia and bulimia.

Vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching, Wasted is the story of how Marya Hornbacher willingly embraced hunger, drugs, sex, and death--until a particularly horrifying bout with anorexia and bulimia in college forever ended the romance of wasting away.

In this updated edition, Hornbacher, an authority in the field of eating disorders, argues that recovery is not only possible, it is necessary. But the journey is not easy or guaranteed. With a new ending to her story that adds a contemporary edge, Wasted continues to be timely and relevant.

'WASTED' Marya Hornbacher
Coming back from an addiction to starvation
"I would do anything to keep people from going where
I went. This book was the only thing I could think of."

"A stunning original and beautifully written book gouging deep into a gruesome subject which, by comparison, other writers have merely flirted with."
KATIE CAMPBELL, 'Evening Standard'

"This factual account of a 23-year-old's experience of anorexia and bulimia is not just another confessional. It has not been written as an act of therapy or for financial gain. It is a prose poem. This does not detract from its painful force nor from the author's searing intelligence (one has to keep reminding oneself that she is only 23) but rather adds to the force of her communication …Like Plath she writes with a metaphoric intensity which at times seems tragically indistinguishable from the power of her drive to self-destruct. Her brutal honesty and her lack of special pleading, only adds to the essential pain of the book. If you want to understand anorexia, read this book."
ALICE THOMPSON, 'The Scotsman'

"The mind of Hornbacher is sharper than were her collar-bones when she weighed 4 stone, was given a week to live, and suddenly decided not to die. It is her 23-year-old body that was wasted by 14 years of anorexia and bulimia. Her true story is painfully honest, analytical, complex and sad: compulsive reading."
'Harpers & Queen'

"A brilliant moving memoir"
TOBIAS JONES, 'Frank'

"What marks 'WASTED' out is the quality of the voice. Hornbacher is, simply, a good writer. Her gift for description makes even the familiar aspects of the phenomenon newly real. She is coolly vivid on the sheer violence of anorexia. There's an edge to her prose …successfully catching a young woman's desperate desire to counter the cultural voice that tells her she's "too much, too much, too much." 'WASTED' will be of value not only to fellow sufferers: any woman who has ever been made to feel gleeful by the diminishing of her physical self will gain from reading this painful and sharp-boned account."
SYLVIA BROWNRIGG, 'Guardian'