From there we follow the twisting psychological path of her illness through her school days, and her growing feelings of guilt in regards to food, to the eventual diagnosis of anorexia nervosa. It begins in her childhood portraying the family customs at mealtime, with early signs that all is not well as the young Katie begins hiding uneaten food in her bedroom. Those looking for a prime example of that statement need look no further than Katie Green’s autobiographical graphic novel Lighter than My Shadow – published by Jonathan Cape – described on its release at the end of last year as “a graphic memoir of eating disorders, abuse and recovery”.Īt 500-plus pages long, Green’s account of her struggles with anorexia, self-esteem and a resulting betrayal of trust is a comprehensive and weighty tome. As a subgenre of that, what has now been termed “graphic medicine” has played an integral part in taking that newcomers’ appreciation of sequential art one step further, ensuring not only that they appreciate comics as a form but also understand its unique ability to convey emotion and share personal experience.

To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.Lighter than My Shadow is an outstanding and courageous use of the graphic novel format to inform, to elucidate and to share.Īrguably, the graphic memoir is the strand of comics publishing most responsible in recent years for legitimising the form in the eyes of a wider audience and underlining that their assumptions about its inherent infantilism have been unfounded.

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Lighter than my shadow