Review: "A Life Half Lived" by Sherri Jolie Fowler

A Life Half Lived by Sherri Jolie Fowler
Published January 2026
★★★

I am writing this book for many reasons, but mostly for Monica. (9)

Fowler's daughter Monica was a teenager when she set out to lose a few pounds—and when anorexia took hold and refused to let her go. In A Life Half Lived, Fowler chronicles her daughter's life, from precocious child to woman devastated by illness. Much of the book is about what didn't work—by the time Monica was in more intensive treatment, the illness was truly entrenched, and fundamentally nothing made much of a difference. At some point it became clear that anorexia was likely to be a death sentence as well as a life sentence, and that it was a matter of time. A book by a parent who has lost a child is a specific thing—a love letter; an obituary; a perspective that nobody else has. Fowler is open about the places where she sees that she and her husband could have done differently (acting sooner, for example, or understanding that just because their daughter wouldn't usually lie didn't mean the eating disorder wouldn't), but ultimately they were trying their best with the information and the knowledge they had.

Of note: The cost of eating disorder treatment in the US is wild. Take this: Dale and I paid a whopping $60,000 upfront for just two months of treatment, requiring us to sell some of our stock market holdings to cover the cost. We had no idea how we would afford anything beyond two months if she needed additional treatment, but in our minds, it didn't really matter. We were elated that she actually wanted to try to get better. If we needed more money, we'd find a way when the time came. (109) It's obviously a privileged thing to be able to pay tens of thousands of dollars for treatment...let alone treatment that didn't work. (I'm reminded of Light, in which Nancy Levine recounts telling her daughter that relapse was out of the question simply because they wouldn't be able to afford more treatment.) But, gad, a $60,000 price tag as a starting point for treatment is just bonkers. (The Internet tells me that half of Americans have less than $500 in savings, and that median liquid cash is about $8,000—that wouldn't include stock market holdings, but just...even this inadequate treatment is out of the question for so many.)