Bite Sized

Compact, compelling and courageous, Bite Sized is a brave and honest account of a mother's experience of her daughter's anorexia. It should be recommended reading for all health care professionals. -- Dr Rachel Bryant-Waugh, Great Ormond Street Hospital
To speak with clarity and sensitivity, in a language so free of the too-available response of guilt or blame, is in itself a kind of care. -- From the foreword by Philip Gross, author of The Wasting Game
A powerful insight into the impact that an eating disorder can have on the whole family. -- Susan Ringwood, Chief Executive of Beat
Bite Sized speaks to me directly, as I imagine it will to any parent who has witnessed the horror of anorexia. A book to be shared with anyone who knows what it is to care. -- Erica Husain, Parent
Bite Sized is a brave and searing account from a mother navigating her daughter's anorexia... honest and moving, not shying away from how painful it is, Bite Sized nonetheless offers hope and a side of the story that needs to be heard. -- Katie Green, author of Lighter Than My Shadow
A generous gift for healthcare professionals, carers, and all who live with challenges of mental and physical conditions - or simply with the ups and downs of being human. -- Dr Clare Short, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
Bite Sized is by turns deeply personal, disturbing and ultimately uplifting ... Fiona Hamilton has captured the very essence of a parent's experience of having a child with an eating disorder and distilled it into an extraordinarily powerful account. She has taken her hard won insights and through them illustrated the impact on a family when a loved one develops this most challenging of conditions: anorexia nervosa. -- Journal of Eating Disorders, 2015

It's a short book. Most of the pages have only a few lines on them, a few thoughts, with little punctuation. However, the language, though sparse, is beautifully and carefully written in a mix of poetry and prose. I personally feel that a journey through the experience of something so difficult to talk about should not be over-complicated by too much unnecessary detail, and for this writing style, it is the space between the sentences that is important and provokes reflection.

As a student, one of the most important messages is that knowing how to 'fix' or treat someone is not always possible, and that being honest with the family is crucial in maintaining a long-term therapeutic relationship.

-- Bristol University Psychiatric Society, 2015