Guy who works from home, wanders between all these coffee shops and bars, feels like he has countless repetitive and meaningless verbal exchanges with people, but no real conversations. Never saying what he really thinks and feels, or asking what he is actually curious to know. What would happen if he said out loud, those thoughts nobody will voice? So he begins to try. While dating (is it dating?) a woman he randomly met, and navigating the awful news that his mother has a terminal cancer, caught too late. I wanted this graphic novel to make me feel more, but it didn’t. Maybe because the main character himself was struggling to find connections, I had difficulty feeling any towards the book itself. And all the faces look perpetually surprised or taken aback or completely at a loss for words, the way the eyes were drawn. It was very unsettling to me, just that visual aspect of absurd shock on all the faces. Made it hard to take seriously- like I felt the characters all had a huge secret joke behind the pages, just waiting to bust out with laughter at how concerned the reader is. Except I wasn’t.
Borrowed from the public library.
2 Responses
Wow, what an unusual book that seems to be…as is your review of it. The review is just about perfect, in fact, in the way that it matches the content of the book and your reaction to it…or the lack of it.
Yes. I admit my writing has not been its best lately- I often feel like I am just bare-bones summarizing things and leaving a lot to be desired. I think it is just reflecting that my mental acuity is still not back to normal, but I am going to write the “reviews” anyway, as I want to hold onto at least some idea of what I’ve been reading.
But really, this book left me feeling kind of nothing. I kept wondering: what was the point? Maybe I missed it all. I am not the only reader who was disturbed by the “googly eyes” on all the characters, though.