When Nancy Tucker was eight years old, her class had to write a list of what they wanted to be when they grew up. She thought, and thought, and then, though she didn't know why, she wrote: I want to be thin. Over the next twelve years, she developed anorexia, was hospitalised, and finally swung the other way towards binge eating disorder. She left school, rejoined school; went in and out of therapy; ebbed in and out of life. From the bleak reality of a body breaking down to the electric mental highs of starvation, she of a life held in thrall by food.