I don’t remember how I came across it, but one of my favorite blogs to read each week is The Biblioracle Recommends. It is written by John Warner, a book columnist for the Chicago Tribune. At the end each edition of his blog, he shares the last five books a readers has read and what he recommends they read next. I submitted my list and John included it in a post this past January. He recommended this book. I immediately put it on hold at my local library and was finally able to read it earlier this summer.
This graphic novel is very unusual in my experience. Most graphic novels I have read are on brightly colored glossy paper. They tend to be heavily plot-driven adventure stories of some kind. This book is none of that. In fact, it is a rather literary, character-driven tale told on plain paper with subdued colors, almost pastel. Interestingly, I don’t think this story would work as well as a straight novel. The drawings tell so much of the story and communicate so much of the feeling of the book that it almost had to be a graphic novel.
The story is about how a young woman named Sabrina who goes missing and how it affects those who know her or know those who know her. Her boyfriend moves in with an old high school friend serving in the Air Force who is himself dealing with being separated from his wife and daughter. As these two men live together and work through their individual issues, they also have to deal with how the missing woman’s story is handled by the press and social media. It is not a lighthearted read. It deals with issues of anxiety, depression, and online abuse. Rather that tell the reader what to think or do, it instead moves the reader through these experiences in an effort to show how it feels to go through these experiences. And that is the strength of this amazing work of art. It wasn’t my favorite book but it is unique and worthy of anyone’s time and attention.
My rating: 3.5/5
