- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Canada / Counterpoint (April 3 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1582432252
- ISBN-13: 978-1582432250
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 14.5 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #570,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
The final and remarkable book of best-selling author Caroline Knapp underlines her gift of leveraging her life experiences into provocative lessons. On the surface, Appetites may appear to be about eating—-complete with Knapp's unflinching account of her anorexia. In fact, Knapp is writing about how every woman can decipher her hunger and loneliness by connecting with her desire to experience pleasure. She illuminates the ways in which cultural taboos about women who desire create vulnerability to disorders of appetite including food and alcohol addictions, compulsive shopping and promiscuous sex. In this expansive view, "one woman’s tub of cottage cheese is another woman’s maxed-out Master Card." Readers will nod in recognition as the author seamlessly weaves autobiography and anthropology, describing her family of origin, profiling women of appetite and countering what she calls "the culture of No!" that curbs and disguises women's desires. Knapp gets to yes by urging readers to ask: "What gives me delight and fully engages me?" Knowing that 42-year-old Knapp died of lung cancer makes this question all the more poignant. Such questions suggest Knapp’s brave and generous legacy. --Barbara Mackoff
From Publishers Weekly
What looks like a consciously altruistic effort to encapsulate one woman's entire life into lessons for the benefit of womankind may be just that: after divulging every gruesome detail of her spiral into anorexia and subsequent self-discoveries in this memoir, Knapp died of lung cancer last June at age 42. Similar in tone to her previous Drinking: A Love Story, this work is candid and persuasive enough to reach many women with analogous problems. But it's more than one woman's tragic story; multitudinous interviews with women with eating disorders, excerpts from classic feminist texts and sociological statistics lend credence and categorize the book under cultural studies as much as self-help. Knapp hypothesizes that the feminists who came after the revolutionary 1960s, herself included, were stifled rather than empowered by the overwhelming choices before them. They gained "the freedom to hunger and to satisfy hunger in all its varied forms." Unfortunately, writes Knapp, size-obsessed fashion magazines and other social messages contradict a woman's right to desire, contributing to the rise in eating disorders and other illnesses. Knapp observes an aspect of the backlash against the feminist movement: when "women were demanding the right to take up more space in the world," they were being told by a still patriarchal society "to grow physically smaller." Though Knapp admits it's "easier to worry about the body than the soul," she hopes creating a dialogue about anorexia will enable all women to nourish both.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sorrow and Satisfaction,
By Elizabeth A. Fulcher (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Appetites: Why Women Want (Hardcover)
More pragmatic than Kathryn Harrison, more emotional and romantic than Naomi Wolf, Caroline Knapp had the rare ability to lay bare her most elemental struggles as a woman of her generation, expanding the personal to a breadth of understanding that encompasses us all. I read her earlier book, "Drinking: A Love Story" years ago--largely in an effort to understand my own mother's alcohol addiction; confronted with issues of my own, I recently sought out this volume again, and was surprised and shocked to learn that Ms. Knapp had died, just after completing "Appetites". It came, however, as no surprise to me that she would have turned her attention to a broader scope of hunger and addiction, as I myself--and every woman in my immediate family--has battled both disordered drinking AND eating patterns. I devoured most of the book within 2 or 3 days--then spent over 2 weeks navigating the final chapters, as I was reduced to tears at the close of almost every paragraph. I found myself spilling copious quantities of ink both underlining and adding margin notes, so familiar was the language, the experiences she chronicled. I was particularly moved and impressed by the fashion in which she used intensely personal material as a starting place for a more scholarly investigation of the subject matter at hand; the book, which reads like a memoir, is nonetheless exhaustively researched and supported with extensive footnotes. I recommend it passionately to anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by choice, exhausted by freedom, shamed by a hunger that seems insatiable.
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a book to buy for your sisters and daughters,
By A Customer
This review is from: Appetites: Why Women Want (Hardcover)
By any scale, I've been a fortunate and successful woman. I deeply enjoy my work, have the opportunity to think deeply, have good health, loving family and children.This book was originally a recommendation from a friend, one of those 'think you might like it' things, that sat on the table. Why would I be interested? Opening it, reading it and being stuck almost motionless by recognition of deep truths has changed that attitude. I'm ordering 5 copies. Young, middle-aged and older women need to read this book and think about it. Both to appreciate the stresses and strains that our mothers experienced, and to realize the residual effect on our lives. Share this book, pass it along to others, it is important.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a misprint,
By
This review is from: Appetites: Why Women Want (Hardcover)
Plenty has been written about WHAT women want; movies have even been titled as such. But this book by Caroline Knapp isn't about WHAT; it's about WHY. Knapp's 1996 book, Drinking: A Love Story, chronicled her battle with alcoholism, whereas Appetites, a much more ambitious book, examines her early battle with anorexia, a condition which was referred to only peripherally in her previous book. According to Knapp's self-awareness revelations, the denial of food is a metaphor that explores the difficulties women have even acknowledging their deepest desires - desires for sex, love, freedom, professional recognition... just life. The message behind Appetites is made more poignant by the fact that Knapp died last year of lung cancer at age 42. Her book is full of wit and wisdom - and we can hope that before death, she came to appreciate those 2 qualities within herself.
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