HOMESICK: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Finding Hope

This memoir about bulimia and its effects by Ralph Lauren's niece alternates between the gruesomely fascinating and tediously sad. Thirty-one-year-old Lauren, whose father (Ralph's brother) heads Ralph Lauren Men's Design, depicts in excruciating detail her odyssey through bingeing, purging, the debilitating sickness that ensues and her struggle to heal. Her story spans her life from the age of nine, when she's rejected by the prestigious School of American Ballet and subsequently embarks on her first attempt to starve herself into the perfect dancer's physique, to her torments as an adult running the gamut of traditional doctors and New Age healers as she tries to recover from a painful and depressing illness presumably brought on by her compulsive fasting, bingeing, purging and exercising. The pressure from her family to be beautiful and her alienation from her own body emerge as Lauren minutely describes her agonies over what she'll eat at each next meal, the clothing choices of everyone she meets and the intimate details of her bowel movements. This book raises the question of whether contemporary fashion standards pressure young women into the destructive behaviors of anorexia and bulimia. Lauren is intelligent, creative and a skilled writer, and she evokes empathy. She has a few encouraging epiphanies, as when, at age 30, she attends a Ralph Lauren fashion show and realizes, "The clothing is incredible as always, but who needs it?" The book's abrupt ending and dearth of conclusions, however, disturbingly portend that the reader may come away with more insights than the author. (Apr.)

Forecast: Women suffering with eating disorders and their families as well as fashion fans interested in life in a fashion family will be drawn to this memoir.