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Product Description
Jon Ronson
‘This hilarious, self-lacerating memoir of a compulsive eater is a superb book ... this is his crowning achievement’
Review
'This hilarious, self-lacerating memoir of a compulsive eater is a superb book. I feel about The Hungry Years the way William Leith feels about buttered toast: I couldn't get enough and I panicked when I was reaching the end. Leith has always been one of our best non-fiction writers and this is his crowning achievement' Jon Ronson 'The Hungry Years is a confessional, satirical, wise, tragic, truly original book about addiction, food and what's really inside a fat man that's trying to get out. The Hungry Years defies categorisation - it's part memoir, part diet book, part comedy, and part sugar rush. It's the first real book about body image for men, and it breaks taboos, breaks new ground, and breaks your heart. William Leith has finally fulfilled his always huge potential. I loved it' Tim Lott 'As a memoir and as comedy, it succeeds beautifully. As a sugar rush, it is definitely compulsive ... As a confessional, it is pretty much a masterclass - frank, tough-minded, funny, generous' Zoe Williams, New Statesman 'Compulsively readable. I gulped it down in a couple of greedy bites ... It is a powerful memoir ... it has the unusual qualities of heart and daring. In the end, these are what stay inside you' Daily Telegraph
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
From the title of the book to the picture of a bitten glazed doughnut on the cover, it's clear that the publishers are shrewdly aiming this book squarely at the whole obesity/dieting sector of the market, but it is about so much more than just overeating. Sex and cocaine abuse feature heavily too, and really the subject matter is any compulsive behaviour we indulge in to unwittingly fill an emotional hole.
I love this book. I'm slightly bigger than Leith ever got, and became so by a different route, so his hilarious descriptions of junk food binges go over my head a bit. But I experienced enough moments of startling self-recognition reading this to make the whole thing ring horribly true, and make me think about myself in ways I've resisted before. Best of all is his writing, which is dry, funny and brutally confessional, all strung around a set of amazingly impressive, casually name-dropped contributions on the subject from important figures he has met as a journalist - everyone from Dr Atkins and the head of Starbucks to the chip guru at the McCain factory and a panoply of scientific and medical experts, celebrity fatties, feminists and philosophers. If you're worried that this is going to be all about the Atkins diet, don't be. I'd recommend this book unhesitatingly to anyone who enjoys a good read and has ever overindulged in anything.
35 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm not usually a reviewer, but I can't resist a line as a small corrective to the first comment here on the book. I've just finished it and I found it to be an astoundingly complex and personal narrative -- thin it ain't, by any definition -- not only about over-eating, or gaining weight, or bingeing, but about the nature and effects of consumption and addiction in all its forms in the developed world. This is not, per se, a book about dieting and weight-watching, and you don't need to have dieted or to have watched your weight to need to read it. It's for any consumer, ie for everybody.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I loved this book - as someone who has similar issues with food I could really identify with him & the problems he's had. He's very witty, funny & approaches a serious problem in a refreshingly different way. Highly recommended!!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The most informative book on bingeing I have ever read
I have just finished reading this book for the second time; there is so much in it that it merits two readings. Read more
Published 11 months ago by bluebirdfp
The Hungry Years, what a read
I was told about this book by a friend who had really enjoyed it. I decided to purchase it although I felt it may end up alongside the numerous un viewed fitness DVD's in my house. Read more
Published 12 months ago by cherryplum
So, so brilliant
I am not English and didn't know who WL was before I put my hands on this book five years ago. I expected a diet book written by a man (I am a woman myself), but the book was so... Read more
Published 13 months ago by So many books, so little time
Painkillers give you pain; Carbs make you hungry; Mobile Phones make...
William Leith writes regularly for the Guardian, the Observer and the Daily Telegraph and one day in January 2003 he set off to interview the controversial diet guru Dr Robert... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Eileen Shaw
Great book - yellowing at the edges
Not so much a review on the book's content which casts interesting lights on overeating but a comment that the book was published in 2006 and although I got a "pristine new copy"... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Bill
Didn't change my life, should have bought a book on healthy eating!!!
Wasn't very impressed with this book, there were a few interesting referrals but nothing that would change my life. Almost the first 20 pages is about eating toast!!!! Read more
Published on 3 Nov 2009 by Amanda Doherty
A Fat-astic Journey
If anyone thinks Leith's The Hungry Years is just yet another bragging account of a previous chubby seeing the light and becoming slim by forgoing refined carbs, think again. Read more
Published on 28 Oct 2009 by Leyla Sanai
Not as bad as I thought it would be but borrow or buy secondhand...
My husband was disappointed when he saw I had purchased this book, as he has a very low opinion of Leith because the quality of his writing is so poor. Read more
Published on 3 Aug 2009 by alimarcam
The Hungry years
An incredibly moving book that really cuts to the heart of why we overeat for emotional reasons but is also an in-depth expose of the food industry and its exploitation of our... Read more
Published on 18 July 2009 by Caz
William Leith bares all
A disturbingly honest account of the angst of food addiction. Insightful and well written. The short vignette chapters make easy reading, and dipping in and out was no problem. Read more
Published on 11 July 2009 by Mrs. R. Gaskell
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