Fat – Regina Hofer

Fat – Regina Hofer – (120 pages, English, softcover, published by Penn State University Press)

'Fat' tells a story that is at once unique and universal: that of a young woman coming of age while struggling against the oppressive weight of an eating disorder and family dysfunction. In this provocative memoir, Austrian-born author and artist Regina Hofer documents her battle with body dysmorphic disorder, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia, which plagued her from her childhood through to adulthood.

This powerful and imaginative graphic memoir follows Regina from her childhood home in Upper Austria, where food and family mealtimes were often associated with feelings of personal inadequacy, to art school at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg and a violent reckoning with her family. At sixteen, Regina began cutting back on meals to the point where her hair started to fall out.

Later, she began to secretly binge at night while her family slept. For a long time, she was able to keep her eating disorder a secret, though hiding her problem didn't stop it from harming her emotional and physical well-being. The pressures of wanting to succeed as an artist in an unsupportive environment led her to a nervous breakdown, a resumption of her eating disorder, and ultimately a strong desire to "start from scratch." Starkly illustrated and viscerally narrated, Fat makes tangible the effects of psychological distress that cannot be precisely named or described, and it does so with a rare intensity. A masterful debut, Hofer's graphic memoir will speak volumes to anyone trying to understand the experience of living with an eating disorder.

“Extraordinary. . . . Juxtaposing surreal imagery and unvarnished confessions, this intense work opens up the pain of living with an eating disorder, pairing artistic innovation with wrenching confessional.” - Publishers Weekly