Marya Hornbacher
When Marya was a young girl, she became bulimic, she explains in this book. By fifteen, she was fully anorexic, starving herself. When the psychiatrists tried to approach the issue, Marya explains that her motivations felt more complicated than she could explain to them, so she had to figure it out for herself in a way. This is the book about that journey toward health and wellness.
Marya's father
A former stage director who married an actress from one of his productions. His wife now works in school administration, so she is often very frantic and overwhelmed, and Marya's father doesn't handle that very well. Instead of working hard for the family, the father often engages Marya's mother in fights that drain the whole family of energy, leaving Marya in a pit of emotional despair.
Marya's mother
Although Marya's mother works hard and is bright and talented as a person, Marya feels an incredible amount of pressure from her to conform to some sort of standard. Marya can tell that her mother feels constrained by beauty standards, so Marya adopts that urgency from her mother. Marya's mother is chronically fatigued and continually at odds with her husband, whom she clearly regrets choosing.
