Warrior: A Memoir

This uneven memoir ties a woman’s demons, manifested as bulimia, to her high achievement. Larson, writing with Eisenstock (Ten on Sunday: The Secret Life of Men), was a college softball champion, a fitness model, and a platoon leader in Iraq. The scenes set among her fellow Marines zing: she is hazed into putting a rabbit eyeball in her mouth, shocks a bunch of 19-year-old guys by beating them all in a foot race up Heart Attack Hill, and delivers an eloquently profane dressing-down to male soldiers who called her an ugly name. Unfortunately, Larson’s narrative gets gummed up with the vague reassurances of self-help: to manage her bulimia, she learns that some things are beyond her control, that she doesn’t have to be perfect, and that things will be better if she eliminates the toxic influences from her life. It’s the rare memoirist who can convey the experience of a psychological illness and its impact on a person’s everyday decisions in words that resonate with those who haven’t experienced that particular form of suffering. Larson never quite manages it. (Apr.)