STRANGERS TO OURSELVES: Stories of unsettled minds, by Rachel Aviv (Harvill Secker, $40)
achel Aviv was aged 6 when she stopped eating. Her parents were in the middle of a messy divorce, fighting over custody. Each blamed the other for their daughter’s condition. When she was too dizzy to stand, they took her to a paediatrician and she was diagnosed with an unusual form of anorexia – a word she’d never heard before. She was referred to a psychiatric unit. The other patients were very thin girls, all older than her. “Some of their faces and arms
