The Reading Cure: How Books Restored my Appetite by Laura Freeman

Laura Freeman is a freelance writer and has written for magazines and newspapers such as The Spectator, Standpoint, The Times, TLS, and Slightly Foxed to name but a few. Laura has recently released her first book and what a read this really turned out to be. Not hard to see why I have always enjoyed reading Laura’s writing. The Reading Cure: How Books Restored my Appetite is a memoir. Laura at the age of fourteen was diagnosed anorexia and his is her story, a journey of how books and reading helped her on her road to recovery.

I know at first hand as a family member suffered from anorexia for many years with little or no help apart from the love of her family around her. For Laura Freeman like all who have suffered from anorexia, they come to loathe themselves and will avoid eating and any situations that will involve food. For more than fifteen years Freeman has been a recovering from this dreadful illness. There was one part of Freeman’s life that she continued to enjoy and that was her love of literature and through reading she discovered food and learned to start enjoying food through the pages of her favorite books.

The journey to recovery is never an easy journey to take and not always a successful one as she writes in her memoir, Laura’s mother fought very hard to keep her out of a clinic and looked after her while on bedrest at home. she read Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man and this tells of him devouring boiled eggs and cocoa. So this was the beginning of the road to recovery for Laura Freeman. Then she progressed onto Dickens and we all know of how well food is talked of in Dicken’s novels. From here she clearly could see that there was a better life to be had.

Freeman writes just beautifully and it is inspiring. She openly talks of her younger life and how her anorexia started and the chaos that her life became, her descriptions of food are just bountiful that you can almost taste the fare on offer. Freeman’s joy of literature and reading is there to be enjoyed and to rejoice at. The optimism of how she copes on her journey is just breathtaking. This is her story of hunger and also obsession, there is happiness here to. The Reading Cure is a brave account of her recovery. Books and reading can cure. Here is the proof if it was ever needed moving and evocative. Delighted to recommend The Reading Cure by Laura Freeman.

272 Pages.

Thank you to Rebecca Fincham and Weidenfeld & Nicolson for the advanced review copy of The Reading Cure: How Books Restored my Appetite by Laura Freeman.

The Reading Cure: How Books Restored my Appetite by Laura Freeman is published by and was published on and is available through Waterstones, Amazon and all good bookshops.