Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir — Book Summary & Review
by Tessa Hulls
Last updated:
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir Summary
Feeding Ghosts is built around Tessa Hulls’s recurring “ghost” framework: the idea that grief and trauma don’t vanish, they haunt your routines, your relationships, and even your body. Hulls structures the graphic memoir to braid childhood memories, medical/mental-health realities, and the quiet logistics of coping, then returns again and again to the same emotional rooms—only with new light and new understanding. One of the clearest anchors is a section titled “Feeding Ghosts,” where Hulls treats caretaking and self-destruction as two sides of the same habit: you keep “feeding” what hurts because it’s familiar, because it gets you through the day, because it once served a purpose.
What makes Hulls’s approach stick is the way she refuses to separate “story” from “evidence.” In chapter-like beats, she shows how specific memories flare up as bodily sensations, how conversations land differently after a diagnosis, and how the visual language of the pages mirrors that instability—panels tighten when control is an illusion, widen when someone finally admits they’re not okay. Hulls also includes concrete craft choices: she marks repetition visually, so you can literally watch the same ghost return in new costumes.
Still, Feeding Ghosts has a hard boundary: it’s not a tidy recovery manual, and it doesn’t aim to generalize your experience into something universally applicable. If you want a linear arc with clean lessons and a triumphant final chapter, Hulls’s honesty will feel messy, even frustrating.
By the end, Hulls doesn’t offer closure so much as a map of how haunting works—and how, with practice, you can stop mistaking the haunt for home.
Key Takeaways from Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir
-
1
Ghosts as a framework: Hulls treats trauma like an active presence that shows up in habits, not just memories.
-
2
“Feeding Ghosts” as a concept: the memoir reframes self-harm and caretaking as familiar strategies that once kept her going.
-
3
Panel rhythm as meaning: visual compression and expansion track control, dissociation, and relief better than plain narration.
-
4
Repetition as evidence: Hulls uses recurring scenes to prove patterns, showing how coping becomes a loop.
-
5
Grief without closure: the book prioritizes accurate emotional mechanics over tidy, motivational endings.
Who Should Read This
Someone who’s stuck in the same emotional loop—reliving old pain in new situations—will recognize how Hulls makes haunting feel practical. If you’ve tried to “move on” but your body keeps disagreeing, Hulls’s graphic structure may finally match your experience.
Who Shouldn't Read This
Someone who wants a step-by-step recovery plan with clear takeaways should skip Hulls, because the memoir refuses to convert pain into instructions. If you dislike heavy mental-health content and visual repetition, Feeding Ghosts will likely feel exhausting rather than cathartic.
Editor's Verdict
The single best thing Feeding Ghosts does is use the “Feeding Ghosts” section to connect caretaking, self-erasure, and harm as one repeating system, not separate tragedies. The real limitation is that Hulls doesn’t provide a clean, transferable roadmap for healing—this is lived complexity, not guidance. This will hit hardest for anyone mid-recovery who’s tired of being told their progress should look linear, especially when they’re still negotiating what “haunting” feels like day to day.
Ready to read Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir?
Get your copy on Amazon today.
Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir — Frequently Asked Questions
About Tessa Hulls
Tessa Hulls is a Canadian author and graphic memoirist whose work draws on personal experience with eating disorders and mental health. They are credible on this topic because Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir is based on their own history and documents recovery through graphic storytelling. Hulls has also published other memoir and graphic nonfiction work, including work in the anthology How to Be a Person in the World.
