Review: "Thin Deep" by Sarah Mackie

Thin Deep by Sarah Mackie
Published August 2024 via Cherish Editions
★★

As a young adult, Mackie fell headlong into an eating disorder. Anorexia became bulimia became a vicious cycle of eating and not eating that would last years. Thin Deep is her story of disorder and finding her way out of it, largely through yoga and variations on CBT.

If I could read only one genre for the rest of my life it might well be memoir (though the idea of giving up lit fic and general nonfiction and so on gives me shivers). Memoir is learning from experiences that are not my own, and also seeing what people with whom I share experiences did differently, and how they chose to frame those experiences. Mackie's story must have been a difficult one to write, and I'm glad she reached a place where she can explore her experience and put words to it.

Generally speaking, this would have benefitted from a few rounds more editing and a good copy editor. Cherish Edition is a self-publisher, and it's not fair to compare a self-published book to something traditionally published (a traditional publisher will often have more resources than an individual author to apply to a book and will definitely have more incentive than a self-publisher to make a book as polished as it can be). I've read some amazing self-published books, but it's worth bearing the context in mind when reading (or deciding whether or not to read) a self-published book. (Note that I received a review copy, so it's possible that updates have since been made; however, the review copy was offered after the publication date, and in that case I generally assume it's the final version.) I didn't mind the typos so much (I kept a personal dairy, loc. 36—actually, didn't Marie Antoinette keep a private dairy so that she could play at working with her hands?), but there are a couple of things that give me pause and would make me reluctant to recommend this to readers who struggle or have struggled with an eating disorder.

Most eating disorder literature has moved away from including specific numbers and details under the understanding that they can be damaging or triggering to some readers. Mackie doesn't note weight, but she walks a (sorry) thin line of how much detail to include, and I think the calorie counts and occasional BMI and exercise details fall solidly in the "could've edited this out" category. Mackie also says some things in the introduction that put me on my guard for pretty much the rest of the book—insinuating that recovery weight gain beyond a certain (thin) point is unhealthy and unattractive. She doesn't return to this in the main portion of the book, and in fact says of yoga that surrounding myself in an environment that didn't judge, that didn't care if my stomach was flat or if my arse was curvy, was so liberating (loc. 1493), but I think I'd been waiting for the other shoe to fall for so much of the book that I was just left thinking that it wouldn't be a good fit for somebody who picked up the book early in recovery, having gained weight—no matter how much or how little—and feeling uncomfortable with it.

Your mileage might vary. Mackie is passionate about yoga, and I appreciate that she is very clear that you don't have to be a toned Instagram guru who can, I don't know, hold bakasana for twenty minutes at a time and then roll into ganda bherundasana before finishing with ten minutes of astavakrasana (I don't do yoga at all and Googled "hardest yoga poses" to find those, so if that sentence doesn't make sense it is squarely on me); that you can get the mental and physical benefits at any level. It's not a book I'm likely to return to, but it might make a good read for those who trust themselves and their trigger limits and are looking to work some yoga and mindfulness into their routine.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.