
Good Girls
A Study and Story of Anorexia
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Narrated by:
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Hadley Freeman
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By:
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Hadley Freeman
About this listen
From Hadley Freeman, bestselling author of House of Glass, comes a “riveting” (The New York Times) memoir about her experience as an anorexic and her journey to recovery.
In 1995, Hadley Freeman wrote in her diary: “I just spent three years of my life in mental hospitals. So why am I crazier than I was before????”
From the ages of fourteen to seventeen, Freeman lived in psychiatric wards after developing anorexia nervosa. Her doctors informed her that her body was cannibalizing her muscles and heart for nutrition, but they could tell her little else: why she had it, what it felt like, what recovery looked like. For the next twenty years, Freeman lived as a “functioning anorexic,” grappling with new forms of self-destructive behavior as the anorexia mutated and persisted. Anorexia is one of the most widely discussed but least understood mental illnesses. Through “sharp storytelling, solid research and gentle humor” (The Wall Street Journal), Freeman delivers an incisive and bracing work that details her experiences with anorexia—the shame, fear, loneliness, and rage—and how she overcame it. She interviews doctors to learn how treatment for the illness has changed since she was hospitalized and what new discoveries have been made about the illness, including its connection to autism, OCD, and metabolic rate. She learns why the illness always begins during adolescence and how this reveals the difficulties for girls to come of age. Freeman tracks down the women with whom she was hospitalized and reports on how their recovery has progressed over decades.
Good Girls is an honest and hopeful story of resilience that offers a message to the nearly 30 million Americans who suffer from eating disorders: Life can be enjoyed, rather than merely endured.
©2023 Hadley Freeman. All rights reserved. Originally published in Great Britain in 2023 by 4th Estate. (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.
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For All Dieters, not just Anorexic Girls
- By Coghan on 02-20-13
By: Portia de Rossi
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Sick Enough
- A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders
- By: Jennifer L. Gaudiani MD CEDS FAED
- Narrated by: Donna Postel
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Patients with eating disorders frequently feel that they aren't "sick enough" to merit treatment, despite medical problems that are both measurable and unmeasurable. They may struggle to accept rest, nutrition, and a team to help them move towards recovery. Sick Enough offers patients, their families, and clinicians a comprehensive, accessible review of the medical issues that arise from eating disorders by bringing relatable case presentations and a scientifically sound, engaging style to the topic.
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Great, and not so great
- By Anonymous on 11-07-21
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Hungry for Life
- A Memoir Unlocking the Truth Inside an Anorexic Mind
- By: Rachel Richards
- Narrated by: Rachel Richards
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In this painfully moving memoir, take a firsthand look at anorexia through the eyes of a young girl. Even in kindergarten, Rachel Richards knows something isn't right. By leading us through her distorted thoughts, she shines a light on the experience and mystery of mental illness. As she grows up, unable to comprehend or communicate her inner trauma, Rachel lashes out, hurting herself, running away from home, and fighting her family. Restricting food gives her the control she craves. But after being hospitalized and force-fed, Rachel only retreats further into herself.
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A Gripping Account of Anorexia and Recovery
- By Nephi Ferguson on 10-12-17
By: Rachel Richards
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Wasted
- A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrated by: Marya Hornbacher
- Length: 5 hrs and 25 mins
- Abridged
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Precociously intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and ambitious, Marya Hornbacher grew up in a comfortable middle-class American home. At the age of 5, she returned home from ballet class one day, put on an enormous sweater, curled up on her bed, and cried because she thought she was fat. By age 9, she was secretly bulimic, throwing up at home after school, while watching Brady Bunch reruns on television and munching Fritos. She added anorexia to her repertoire a few years later and took great pride in her ability to starve. Marya's story gathers intensity with each passing year. By the time she is in college and working for a wire news service in Washington D.C., she is in the grip of a bout of anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. Down to 52 pounds and counting, Marya becomes a battlefield: her powerful death instinct at war with the will to live. Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and slip into a netherworld where up is down, food is greed, and death is honor? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustained both anorexia and bulimia through 5 lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she recreates the experience and illuminates the tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders.
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Abridged=Horrible
- By Kelly on 05-05-13
By: Marya Hornbacher
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The Art of Starving
- By: Sam J. Miller
- Narrated by: Tom Phelan
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Matt hasn't eaten in days. His stomach stabs and twists inside, pleading for a meal, but Matt won't give in. The hunger clears his mind, keeps him sharp - and he needs to be as sharp as possible if he's going to find out just how Tariq and his band of high school bullies drove his sister, Maya, away. Matt's hardworking mom keeps the kitchen crammed with food, but Matt can resist the siren call of casseroles and cookies because he has discovered something: the less he eats the more he seems to have...powers.
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Transformative book!
- By Uno Person on 01-01-20
By: Sam J. Miller
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An Apple a Day
- A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia
- By: Emma Woolf
- Narrated by: Emma Woolf
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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I haven't tasted chocolate for over ten years and now I'm walking down the street unwrapping a Kit Kat. Remember when Kate Moss said, 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels'? She's wrong: chocolate does. At the age of 32, after ten years of hiding from the truth, Emma Woolf finally decided it was time to face the biggest challenge of her life. Addicted to hunger, exercise and control, she was juggling a full-blown eating disorder with a successful career, functioning on an apple a day.
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A memoir of a silver spoon, maybe.
- By S. covely on 06-05-16
By: Emma Woolf
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The Girls at 17 Swann Street
- By: Yara Zgheib
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears - imperfection, failure, loneliness - she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere 88 pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.
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Wonderful
- By JoelleW on 02-25-19
By: Yara Zgheib
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Before We Were Blue
- By: E.J. Schwartz
- Narrated by: Chloe Dolandis, Gail Shalan
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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At Recovery and Relief, a treatment center for girls with eating disorders, the first thing Shoshana Winnick does is attach herself to vibrant but troubled Rowan Parish. Shoshana — a cheerleader on a hit reality TV show — was admitted for starving herself to ensure her growth spurt didn’t ruin her infamous tumbling skills. Rowan, on the other hand, has known anorexia her entire life, thanks to her mother’s “chew and spit” guidance.
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Meh
- By Pink Amy on 01-03-25
By: E.J. Schwartz
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Hunger
- A Memoir of (My) Body
- By: Roxane Gay
- Narrated by: Roxane Gay
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined", Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.
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Dark, thought provoking, sometimes frustrating
- By River Holmes-miller on 06-21-17
By: Roxane Gay
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Life Without Ed (Tenth Anniversary Edition)
- How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too
- By: Jenni Schaefer
- Narrated by: Jenni Schaefer
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The 10th anniversary edition of the book that has given hope and inspiration to thousands who are dealing with eating disorders.
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Amazing
- By laura on 10-16-24
By: Jenni Schaefer
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House of Glass
- The Story and Secrets of a Twentieth-Century Jewish Family
- By: Hadley Freeman
- Narrated by: Hadley Freeman
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Hadley Freeman knew her grandmother, Sara, lived in France just as Hitler started to gain power, but rarely did anyone in her family talk about it. Long after her grandmother’s death, she found a shoebox tucked in the closet containing photographs of her grandmother with a mysterious stranger, a cryptic telegram from the Red Cross, and a drawing signed by Picasso. This discovery sent Freeman on a decade-long quest to uncover the significance of these keepsakes, taking her from Picasso’s archives in Paris to a secret room in a farmhouse in Auvergne to Long Island to Auschwitz.
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Performance
- By Derek on 08-30-22
By: Hadley Freeman
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Paperweight
- By: Meg Haston
- Narrated by: Mandy Siegfried
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert. Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she's worked so hard to avoid.
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The Fake Southern Accent? Yeeeeesh!
- By Daryl on 06-30-17
By: Meg Haston
What listeners say about Good Girls
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- melanie tucker
- 08-29-23
Everyone who has a girl should read this!
I never thought our family would ever deal with an eating disorder but here we are!
Hadley gives such insight , truth and hope by explaining her life.
During our darkest moments, this book allowed me to process the fears and struggles of our daughter.
There is HOPE and one always needs hope on a hellish path.
LISTEN TO IT!
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-31-23
Great informative book!
A very honest and informative book. All girls should read it! Especially those who have eating disorders and families of those girls. We’ll done!
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- Pauline Kenny
- 04-22-23
Excellent book about the personal experience of anorexia
A detailed look at the personal experience of the author when she had anorexia with information about the disease from current studies and research. Beautifully written. Well read by the author. Hadley Freeman is a well known newspaper columnist in the UK and her previous book, The House of Glass about her family history, is also excellent. I’ve had no personal experience with anorexia (thank God!) but I saw the behaviour in other young women when I was young.
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- Devyn
- 07-25-24
Loved the idea of a modern take on Eating Disorders.
I loved the book at first until about chapter 7 when the blatant Transphobia started and continued throughout the rest of the book. The only reason I finished it was because I thought it would get better but when it didn't I just wanted to finish it and never think about this book again.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ian N.
- 02-11-24
Has potential, but missed the mark.
It’s not a bad book in sum, though I found that Freeman was sometimes citing her own experiences as if they were research-backed findings and therefore absolute fact. What completely turned me off was the totally unnecessary addition of Freeman’s opinions on trans kids and gender affirming care. It was off topic and she literally could not keep the audible contempt out of her voice while narrating. It was just inappropriate.
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3 people found this helpful