Bøger af Marianne Apostolides

Adolescence is a time full of pitfalls for teenage girls. Many escape relatively unscathed; some -- unable to cope successfully with the pressures exerted by family, school, and the media -- develop eating disorders. Marianne Apostolides was one of those girls. She became anorexic at the age of fourteen and struggled for the next ten years with anorexia, binge eating, and bulimia.In this courageous work, Apostolides recreates the years in which she felt she could control her life only by controlling her diet. Insecure, unable to communicate with her parents, and driven to achieve at school, she initially found relief in the structure of calorie-counting and schedules. When the constant dieting became too much for her body to handle, she began to binge, and then to binge and purge. Her world defined by food, Apostolides would battle throughout high school, college, and adulthood to confront the deeper issues that compelled her to hurt herself again and again.This is a book about a young woman who did not know how to cope with her feelings, and who, through therapy, was able to find the road to recovery at last. Absorbing and honest, hers is an important story of anguish, frustration, and, ultimately, triumph.

Deep Salt Water is an intimate memoir about abortion, expressed through a layering of language and imagery of the ocean. The story gravitates around the reconnection and ongoing entanglements of a couple who'd had an abortion twenty years earlier. Interdisciplinary in nature and entre-genre in style, Deep Salt Water is organized as thirty-seven separate pieces, divided into three sections (or 'trimesters') that detail the couple's love affair and unwanted pregnancy; the abortion itself; their separation and tenuous reconnection; and the sorrowful, urgent attempt to come to terms with the abortion and its consequences.Included in its pages are two innovative elementsa series of collages by visual artist Catherine Mellinger and a section entitled the 'Afterbirth,' which discusses environmental issues that informed Apostolides' writing and moves the book from a place of intense intimacy to an outward focus that engages with the broader world and our shared responsibility and hope.

Because fear can transform into confidence, recklessness, the kind of power you can't imagine until you're inside it. And then, once you've felt it, you can't feel alive when it's gone. Sophrosyne. You understood this feeling. I know you did, though you never said it. I saw it, instead, on your face when you danced.Sophrosyne is one of only four virtues identified by Socrates – four traits which, if lived deeply, define who we are as human beings. But sophrosyne is a concept our culture has long forgotten. 'Self-restraint,' 'self-control,' 'modesty,' 'temperance' – none of these terms expresses the essence of the word.In this provocative new novel about desire and restraint in a digital age by acclaimed author Marianne Apostolides, 21-year-old Alex is consumed by the elusive problem of sophrosyne for reasons he cannot share with others. While Alex's philosophy professor believes studying it will help shed light on the malaise of our era, Alex hopes it will release him from his darkly disturbing relationship with his mother. As he attempts to uncover his mother's truth, Alex is drawn inside an amorphous, indefinable undercurrent of love and violation. Only through his lover, Meiko, does Alex open into a new understanding of sophrosyne, with all its implications. Reminiscent of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, Sophrosyne asks readers to surrender themselves to the book's logic and language. Infused with a sensuality balanced by its intellect, Sophrosyne reads like "e;the music's rhythm... soft like wax and supple, warm,"e; pulsing through your veins.