TYRANNY

This searing portrait of a teenager with an eating disorder is a slim comic stuffed with weighty issues. Readers will page along as Anna morphs from a young, healthy girl into an adolescent riddled with hormones and self-image issues and, finally, an adult with a life-threatening eating disorder. She scarcely tips the scale when she bottoms out at a dangerously low 85 pounds, barely surviving on a vitamin-enriched diet of diet drinks and laxatives. Fairfield’s spare illustrations—loose and undefined line drawings that parallel Anna’s inability to distinguish between reality and disease—work to elevate the elusiveness of her protagonist’s demon. The author personifies the eating disorder here as Tyranny, an ill-defined whirlwind that berates and abuses Anna, a slippery Etch-a-Sketch–esque figure who lurks and slinks her way invidiously through the panels. It’s a crusading work with a laudable message and boldly honest about the disease and its consequences; death, laxative abuse and early-onset osteoporosis all make an appearance. A well-proportioned volume with a haunting story and characters—both literally and figuratively. (Graphic fiction. 14 & up)