She will cut out all pizza, ice-cream and those cursed Dairy-lea triangles that are her comfort blanket.

Jessica Hassan is a thirteen year old, who like women of all ages makes the decision once again to lose weight. It effects every aspect of their life and there are many factors in eating disorders that effect each person that suffers differently and i feel that Judith Fathallah perfectly shows the struggles and severity of this illness in Monkey Taming- You've eaten too much you fat pig. People with anorexia feel a compulsive need to lose weight and have a crippling fear of gaining weight. I'm going to hide this review for the minor spoilers and just in case someone may find it potentially triggeringĪnnorexia Nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any other mental illness, it has been found that without treatment twenty percent of people who suffer from eating disorders die. Trigger Warnings: Eating disorders, self harm, suicidal thoughts & depression. Only because I was so happy she managed to recover. I think I would have liked more detail into her recovery as things started to improve.Īpart from that, I had also forgotten the author had a lived experience of anorexia, so reading that at the end made me cry a bit. My second reason for giving it 4 stars is that her recovery suddenly happened, it became rushed in the final few pages and she was suddenly better.

And I believe like the writer could have still had the same impact with her novel without including the numbers. So although I don’t remember being triggered when I read it many years ago, I do know it can be a huge trigger for those living with eating disorders to see numbers and then feel not sick enough. The only reasons I’ve given it 4 stars instead of 5 is because I know my past self would have taken all the weights, heights and calories in the book and then compared them to myself. Yes it brought up so many somewhat painful memories, but it also brought me so much relief to remember that I got out. I decided to reread it again recently, now that I’ve been fully recovered for a number of years. I loved the book a lot and could relate to many of the characters who were struggling in the book.

It gave me so much comfort to know I wasn’t alone and to start to feel like maybe recovery was a possibility.

I initially read this book ten years ago when I found it at my local library and I was in the grips of an eating disorder.

Monkey taming by judith fathallah