Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green

Lighter Than My Shadow is a graphic memoir.  It's all in shades of black, grey and white.  I love colour so it surprised me just how quickly this fantastic book drew me in.

One little warning – the book is huge!!  About A4 sized and over 3 inches thick.  So you'll get a work out when you are reading it.

Before I tell you any more about it, promise me you won't just pull a face, think it's too difficult a topic and give it a skip.  All those things are true but it is done with such grace and skill that you really should read it.

Here goes.  The author is an illustrator but also a recovered (or recovering) anorexic and sometime binge eater (but not bulimic).  After seeing what happened to her and why I felt hugely guilty about all the times I have ever joked that I wished I could be anorexic for a while so I could lose weight – how crass was I?

So if you want to be a bit more sensitive about these things, I'm sure this book will help – and if you have, or know someone who has, issues in this area I think the book is a must.

This book is fabulous for so many reasons – the not least of which is the great (and incredibly subtle) illustration.

It's a pretty quick read because although the book is large it is mostly drawings and fairly few words.