You Remind Me of You

by Eireann Corrigan

Book Overview

For use in schools and libraries only. Chronicles in verse form the author's eating disorders, her days in and out of treatment facilities, and the shock of her high school boyfriend's attempted... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0439297710
• ISBN13: 9780439297714
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Push
• Length: 123 Pages
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 7.2"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Honest and Powerful

I am not, in general, a big fan of free-verse poetry; most that I've read is pretentious and disappointing. In this memoir, however, Eireann Corrigan shows how powerful and wonderful the form can be. With the honesty of firsthand experience driving the words, the poetry breaks free of the all-too-common trap of self-importance. The book seems to uncannily bypass conscious response and transmit its messages directly to the deepest, most vulnerable regions of the reader's soul.At first the prospect of reading 123 pages of short poems about a woman's struggles with anorexia and bulimia might seem daunting, or even tiresome, but You Remind Me Of You quickly does away with any such apprehensions. The poems do not, as might be expected (or feared), retread the same piece of ground. Instead, they map that area so delicately and traverse it so carefully that no syllable seems extraneous. Corrigan explores facets of the experience that I would never have even known existed -- ways in which she affected others, others affected her, she affected herself, or others affected one another.The author pulls no punches in relating her experiences, and the effect is unlike anything I've ever experienced. I am a rather cynical reader, not given to exaggerated emotional response. This book, however, brought tears to my eyes -- not tears of admiration or artistic appreciation so much as tears of sorrow at understanding (in some small, vicarious way) the experiences she had. More than that, I was physically affected by the reading: my breaths came as irregular gasps; my limbs and digits quivered; my throat became dry; my heart pumped furiously. This is a raw book, and although its scope is perhaps somewhat narrower than those of other raw books (about, say, war or epidemics), its power is undeniable. I recommend it, and urge all readers to take the time to focus on it and allow its effects to be fully felt, for then it will be at its best.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Finally, a book about eating disorders and suicide that doesn't preach at teenagers and talk down to them! Where was this book when I was sixteen?Poetry has a reputation for being difficult to understand, but this free verse is so approachable and brutally honest that it draws the reader in. Who can resist lines like ""I'm remembering our first date, how you told me you couldn't imagine marrying anyone who wasn't Jewish and I told you, just as earnestly, as gently, that I couldn't imagine / getting through High School / without killing myself. And you said Well that gives us three years"? Or "And you still expect every ball you sail / through the net to earn you something else, / some mysterious level of respect, maybe even / a piece of the boy slouching out of the weight room. / You haven't learned to pare yourself down yet, / to sit with your memories of strength, on the bench. / You still think you can settle everything with this basket. / And you still believe you're supposed to win."For teenagers or for anyone who remembers High School, the loneliness, pain, joy, first love, self doubt, and everything connected with being human at a time when you weren't sure who you were, these poems will reach you. For everyone who has had an eating disorder or who knows someone who has, these poems will offer some insight and understanding. And for everyone who has ever been in love, or thought they were in love, these words sting: "It's easy enough to mistake being grateful for being in love. And I/ /say , "No, he's never been grateful like that..." / She brushes my hair behind my ears and / tells me "I wasn't talking about him." A lot of the words in these poems sting. But then, so does salt, when you pour it on a wound. It stings, but it also cleans. And helps you heal.These poems may provide healing. They may provide laughter. They may provide tears. But they will definately provide a glimpse into the life of one teenager who went through adolescence and lived to tell the tale. This is a very worthwhile read that isn't always enjoyable, but is always memorable.

Funny, Smart, Real...GREAT.

This is my very favorite book! Eireann's story is the most elegant retelling of what it's like to be sick, to be sad in your teens and what love can [and cannot] do to save you.It is both a heartrending account of a terribly sad illness, the way in which that illness turns you into your own worst enemy, and the possibilty for healing and for love.I read the whole book in one afternoon cause I couldn't put it down. It's so real. Not only is it an elegant account of her sickness but also jut about the best depiction of teenage love I have read. Eireann really understands the way in which teens believe and act in accordance with an idea of a higher, truer, better love. It is also about coming to understand just how much love can help you--and what love can't do. Ultimately Eireann got better because she understood the dead-end nihilism of her situation and chose to make herself better.I expected to be moved. I didn't expect to laugh so much and to laugh and cry on the same page. Her ability to move the reader from the bitter to the sweet and back again, often within the same passage, is the mark of a poet fully in control of her craft and honest and playful with her life.

FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT RIGHT.

I picked up a copy of You Remind Me Of You with a rather morbid interest. My sister had been an anorexic and the literature I'd absorbed to understand her plight ranged from the uselessly juvenile to the deeply self-abusive. Everyone who tackled the issue seemed interested primarily in disguising masochistic boasts under the goopy rhetoric of the self-help movement. Fine for therapy but of little interest to someone trying to understand the mechanics of the illness.The glut of private, soupy memoirs made me suspicious of Ms. Corrigan's book--a memoir told by a 24 year-old that dealt with anorexia and ended with her boyfriend's would-be Cobain finish--"Dear God!" I thought, "must all our wounds go undressed? Does everybody's private anguish deserve a book deal?"Well in Ms. Corrigan's case absolutely. One of her poems is worth fifty of Elizabeth Wurtzel's self-pitying memoirs. Ms. Corrigan's story could all too easily dip into the realm of the pseudo-Plath but her wit, playfulness and, ultimately, willingness to be honest about her own complicity in her situation redeems the narrative. Ms. Corrigan writes with a certainty and verve remarkably assured for someone who can't be more than a few years out of college and is able to make the rather grim details of her situation--the gory truth of anorexia is an ugly scene--more than simply shocking. Critics who have picked on her careful attention to the gruesome details of her illness as some form of masturbatory shock factor totally miss the point. To avoid a frank discussion of her situation would be to let herself off the hook and gussey up the nasty way in which eating disorders make sufferers both victim and victimizer.This is a courageous book. It is a moving book. It is also a funny book. But mostly this is a poet at the top of her game. I hungerly await her next work.

It Reminds Me of Great Reading

At its heart a moving drama of love, death and rebirth (sort of Plath meets Lazarus), Corrigan's book is also an unintended antidote for the millions of girls poisoned by the desire for the unattainable abs of the modern pop princess (Starve me, baby, one more time?). For this work, Corrigan chose a writing style that allows her to capture the subtle nuances of pain, hope and helplessness, while remaining accessible to the anguished pre-teens for whom the story serves as warning.More than just offering the reader good literature, the author performs a great service by giving us a window into her pain. It is a poetic confession that leaves us, the readers, aware of our own need for penance.In some of its early scenes, the story becomes the most modern of fairy tales. While dragons once locked damsels in towers, today we find anorexia chaining distressed heroines in hospital wards. While true love used to ride to the rescue, the prince now gets stoned in his car. Corrigan later becomes the prince herself, waking her beloved from a very different kind of enchanted sleep. As the narrator grows back into an adult from her anorexia-imposed state of physical infancy, the tone matures as well.In a culture awash in "reality programming," Corrigan's book proves as poignant, poetic, and real as anything I have watched or heard in years.