Medical and potential trigger issues: eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, sexual assault, OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), alcoholism, mental health, suicide, death, grief Review by Alison Kent Lucille by Ludovic Debeurme is a startlingly beautiful book that starts out with a young woman walking through the woods. Her cellphone goes off; it’s her mother. She lies, saying she didn’t take a detour home from school. The woods are her only apparent solace. Socially awkward and full of self-doubt, it quickly becomes apparent that she is also seriously anorexic. Her solitary sexual explorations fill her with more self-loathing than relief. She is… Read More
Tyranny
Guest Book Review by Ryan Wright According to a 2020 report from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston Children’s Hospital, 28.8 million Americans will experience an eating disorder in their lifetimes, and one person dies from an eating disorder every 52 minutes.1 The insidious nature of eating disorders, in this case Anorexia Nervosa, is aptly portrayed as a tyrannical demon in Lesley Fairfield’s book Tyranny. In Tyranny, Fairfield masterfully depicts the struggle of Anna, a young woman grappling with unrealistic portrayals of women in the media, peer pressure, and a family that, although well… Read More
Eating Matters
Book Review by Kevin Wolf Ink in Water: An Illustrated Memoir (Or, How I Kicked Anorexia’s Ass and Embraced Body Positivity) Eat and Love Yourself Blossoms and Bones: Drawing a Life Back Together Guts Fat Free: Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! Eating is an essential part of life. When we have a problem with food it impacts everything else about ourselves. This review covers five books that relate to eating matters. These graphic works provide a variety of very personal stories (except Eat and Love Yourself which is fictional) of eating disorders. They reflect the memoirist’s environment,… Read More
Lighter Than My Shadow
Guest review by Crystal Yin Lie added 20/3/18 “Pictures mark an increase in the symbolic tenor of the discourse of anorexia,” writes Erin O’Connor in her study of how late-19th century medical photography came to frame anorexia nervosa as a discrete pathology. Wresting the representation of anorexia (and eating disorders more generally) from the realms of medical science, contemporary writers and artists have turned to a different pictorial form—the graphic form—creating a profusion of narratives including British artist Katie Green’s debut memoir, Lighter Than My Shadow (2013). In My Shadow, Green depicts Katie’s experience with eating disorders—beginning with childhood anorexia—anxiety,… Read More