Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Before Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O’Malley wrote Lost At Sea, a graphic novel about Raleigh, an eighteen-year-old girl road tripping home from California to Vancouver. Raleigh’s reason for being in California, the events that led up to her finding herself in a car with three people who are not exactly her friends, and the occasion for her own existential crisis follows a slow reveal. Raleigh’s process of untangling her thoughts and memories through an autobiographical meandering is paired with the real, believable dialogue that floats through the interior of the car, drawing her in and out of her own interiority.

Lost At Sea is a road trip book, and O’Malley illustrates numerous diners, motel rooms, and tiny, West Coast American towns, distinguishing them from one another to distance and progression, while also drawing attention to the way every small town is a replication of the same small town. Raleigh’s travel companions – Stephanie, Ian, and Dave – are well rounded and interesting, and they react favorably to the fact that Raleigh is joining them on their trip. They match Raleigh’s interiority with their own energy, dealing with obstacles that arise throughout the book humorously and authentically. When their car breaks down, Stephanie and Raleigh sit on the curb waiting for Ian and Dave to fix the car. They can’t figure it out, and give up with Dave’s exclamation, “I guess we should have studied harder in that class on how to be men.”

Raleigh slowly comes to terms with placing herself in the world – she’s a student at UBC, and her questions of belonging and home stem, in part, from her transition from high school to university. For example, her own thoughts are threaded with connection, or attempting to find connection:

Every time you look up at the stars, it’s like opening a door. You could be anyone, anywhere. You could be yourself at any moment in your life. You open that door and you realize you’re the same person under the same stars. Camping out in the backyard with your best friend, eleven years old. Sixteen, driving alone, stopping at the edge of the city, looking up at the same stars. Walking a wooded path, kissing in the moonlight, look up and you’re eleven again. Chasing cats in a tiny town, you’re eleven again, you’re sixteen again. You’re in a rowboat. You’re staring out the back of a car. Out here where the world begins and ends, it’s like nothing ever stops happening.

An extended conclusion to the book occurs in a small town (possibly in Oregon), where Raleigh convinces Ian, Dave, and Stephanie that she doesn’t have a soul, that it’s living inside of a cat, and they run through the town late at night, engaging in a treasure hunt to retrieve it for her. It’s one part realistic and one part whimsical, tied together by Raleigh’s experience of postadolescene and discovery of who she is and who she can be. O’Malley’s writing is lyrical at times, and ends with something that is more poem than prose, when delivered in Raleigh’s disconnected, re-connected, voice:

I am leaning back and running with it and staring at the stars and I’m eleven, I’m sixteen, I’m eighteen, I’m a newborn, I’m everyone everywhere with you without you unbound set free in limbo lost at sea.

Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks is a coming-of-age graphic novel that shares several similarities with Vera Brosgol’s Anya’s Ghost (and not just because both books have a ghost haunting the protagonist!). Both Hicks’ and Brosgol’s graphic novels are influenced strongly by their own biographical matter – like protagonist Anya, Brosgol moved from Russia to the US when she was five-years-old, and like Hicks’ protagonist Maggie, she was homeschooled until high school and had three brothers. Both books also show an incredible sense of making the high school experience of their characters realistic and authentic (and if you’ve picked up JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, you’ll know why the word “authentic” is cropping up all over the place!).

Hicks’ Friends With Boys begins on Maggie’s first day of high school – she has been homeschooled throughout elementary and middle school, and, like her three brothers before her, it is now her turn to make the transition into a high school environment. The reader is immediately introduced to the “boys” in Maggie’s life, the male role models that are provided to her in abundance by her family situation. This is largely because her father, who has just been promoted to police chief, takes responsibility for Maggie and her brothers when his wife (Maggie’s mother) leaves the family. An exchange between Maggie’s dad and brother reveals the tension of the separation. Maggie’s dad says, “It’s exactly seventeen years since your mom started homeschooling you lot,” and her brother responds, “Yeah, and to celebrate, she took off.” Change has become familiar to Maggie – her mom leaving, starting high school – but when her father mentions that he has to get a hair cut because “Apparently the good people of Sandford will tolerate a cop who looks like a hippie, but a chief of police is another matter,” it becomes one more “something different” to deal with on her first day of school.

Maggie’s brothers, twins Zander and Lloyd, and older brother Daniel, already go to high school, and when she has a mini-freak-out on her first day, they are all there to help her get through it (even though Daniel won’t walk her to school, insisting going alone is a “rite of passage”). On her first day of school Maggie meets Lucy and her brother Alastair, and forms a loose friendship with them both inside and outside of school. One of my favorite moments in the graphic novel is a map that Maggie draws of her high school, including which hallways to avoid and which shortcuts to take: “Makeout stairwell AVOID!!” “Grade 9 Bathrooms.” “People Sleep Here.” “Nice Place to Eat Lunch.” “Third Period.” The library is also notably present on her map, occupying a large square at the center of the page.

Hicks’ artistic style is also of note in this book, and her representations of her characters seem so real and nuanced. Her characters actually look like high school students, and they cover a wide spectrum of character “types.” Although Daniel is definitely a “theatre geek” and Lucy and her brother Alastair would fall into the “alternative/punk” type, Hicks does not allow her characters to remain trapped in these strict definitions. She presents details that round and flesh out her characters, so that even if they may initially seem to fit into a particular type, they go much deeper than that. They are believable and real, and they provide something concrete for readers to hold on to.

Friends With Boys follows Maggie as she encounters the new world of high school, makes friends, and unravels a ghost story. Maggie’s family is a tight-knit group navigating a new world where their mother is no longer in the picture, relying on one another to find a new place for themselves. It is a poignant coming of age story told through Hicks’ incredible art and skillful writing. 

The Diviners by Libba Bray

I picked up The Diviners by Libba Bray on Friday and finished it late on Saturday night. I remember when I first started reading longer books when I was younger, bigger than the usual 200-300 page books that I was used to. I don’t know why, but when I was twelve, I started reading Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes books, all of which were something like 500-600 pages long. And finishing one would take a longer time, but I’d be so excited to get to the end and realize that I’d read what seemed like a tome. The Diviners runs up to 578 pages long, but I read that thing so fast, and when I was finished I was just sort of sad that it was over. I’m glad this is a series, but it’s hard to be just a couple of weeks past the publication of The Diviners knowing that it’s going to be a while before the next book comes out!

I think I’ve advertised how much I like Libba Bray on this blog already. Going Bovine, Beauty Queens, the Gemma Doyle trilogy; Bray writes so diversely, but so effectively. She’s starting to become the equivalent of a JK Rowling for me, whose books I’d actually go and try to seek out on the midnight of their release just to get to the story as soon as possible. Her writing, plot, and characters always have something about them that sticks with me as a reader for a really long time after I put down her books (and when someone asks who my favorite author is, I can’t help but always defer to Bray, because her books are almost all in my top ten).

There is so much to like about The Diviners. The story focuses mainly on Evie (Evangeline) O’Neill, a seventeen-year-old girl living at the height of the 1920s – the flappers, Prohibition, the aftermath of WWI, the nightclubs and speakeasies of New York City. Evie has a special gift: she can read objects just by touching them, learning the innermost secrets of the people who own them. This is what gets her into trouble in her small hometown of Zenith, Ohio, where she accidentally reads an object and exposes a scandal. She is subsequently sent away to live with her uncle in New York City, who owns and operates “The Museum of the Creepy Crawlies,” a museum of American folklore, superstition, and the occult. When her uncle (who’s last name, Fitzgerald, is also a neat reference to the time period, and both F. Scott and Zelda both have references throughout!) explains that he’s going to be a pretty hands-off guardian, Evie is excited to explore the city and live as much as she can while she’s there.

She is immediately plunged into a world of Ziegfeld girls and speakeasies, meeting Theta Knight and her “brother” Henry Dubois, and attending elaborate parties and dances with them. She is reacquainted with her old friend Mabel, and Jericho, who works for her uncle, and characters Memphis Campbell and Sam Lloyd crisscross their stories with her own.

However, Evie is not the only person in New York City with a special power. And there is also something else waking up – something old and evil and set on a plan that will bring about the end of the world.

I hate being scared by movies; I love being scared by books. The Diviners knows just what, in the 1920s, is going to bring about an all too-real fear. The refrain that runs throughout The Diviners gives me chills every time I read it, “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ‘em off for a coupla stones,” and the murder mystery that builds at the heart of this novel is absolutely terrifying. But it’s held together by the teenage characters – almost all seventeen – who each have a special power that keeps them from being absolutely ordinary, in a time in American History where anything seems possible and identities can be changed by a couple of easy lies. Bray brings this historical period to life, particularly highlighting its youthful newness. The dialogue is fast-moving, employing great 1920s slang that is, in part, what is so effective in constructing this historical period. Theta says to Evie early in the story, “Swell. Name your night and I’ll leave a coupla tickets for you both. Well, I’d love to stay and beat my gums, but if I’m gonna hit on all sixes later, I gotta grab my beauty sleep. Swell to meet ya, Evil.”

There is so much history in this book, made palatable and interesting in Bray’s hands. The flappers, anticipation of the Great Depression, coming to terms with the end of WWI, the KKK, the eugenics movement, and the Chinese Exclusion Act all background the story and encourage an active reading of history in story. I loved The Diviners and feel pretty lucky to get to read two new Libba Bray books in a year basically (Beauty Queens came out a little over a year ago). I think this book will definitely get a reread before the next book in the series comes out.  

Get Well Soon by Julie Halpern

Teenager Anna Bloom has just arrived at a mental hospital, where she immediately starts writing letters to her best friend Tracy in pencil as a way to make sense of her situation (“I don’t like pencils, I told them. They smudge. I once kept a journal all in pencil, and when I went back to read all of the depressing stuff that I wrote, it was gone. Smudged away”). She’s been checked in by her parents and left for an unexplained amount of time, to, presumably, “get better.” Her depression stems from her high school experience, her time at home with her family, and her day-to-day life, or, as Anna more succinctly explains, “Life sucks. I’m fat. Nothing interesting ever happens to me. I don’t want to deal with that shit anymore.”

She soon learns the ropes at the mental hospital, slowly figuring out what the days look like as the reader experiences them with her. She meets Matt O., who has been in there for six months; Justin, the guy that she crushes on; Luther, who believes he’s Satan; and her roommate Sandy, who takes care of a plastic baby doll. She is introduced to new daytime events, including the Sunday night movie, Appreciations, Community, and Relaxation. After she’s there long enough, Anna notes, “My teachers at real school finally sent my homework, and – oh joy! – I get to read The Crucible. How sad that someone could write a play about witchcraft and make it so boring.”

Anna’s letters to Tracy reflect on what life looked like before her entrance into the mental hospital. Her anxiety, panic attacks, and depression are traced backwards, to connect the reasons why she is where she is. But Anna finds that the longer she’s at the hospital, the more normal, and better, she feels. She stops crying. She starts losing weight. She makes friends. Her panic attacks stop. And she starts dreading the day she has to leave.

One thing that makes the mental hospital bearable is Justin, a boy Anna’s age who wears beat-up Converse shoes just like she does. There is a no touching rule at the hospital, and, at the beginning, Anna and Justin rely on talking at mealtimes and in the Day Room, and Anna crushes on him and hopes he likes her back. She starts thinking about what could happen if they went out together outside of the hospital, her anxiety coming back in a hilarious way:

Oh god. I cannot imagine ever ever ever being naked with another human being in my whole life. Is it ever going to happen? Do I want it to happen? Will I know what to do if it does? Maybe I should keep an eye on Callie and Troy for some pointers. Would that make me a Phil-level perv? Hey – I know! I’ll get a boyfriend who can show me how to do everything! Yeah! That sounds so easy, why didn’t I think of it sooner? Oh wait – I did. Like, every single second of my life. I am getting very desperate here.

Author Julie Halpern makes her characters so believable, that they never once lose their sense of teenagerness, even when removed from the typical environments – school and home – that usually define teenage experience. She makes Anna a character trying to come to terms with her depression and anxiety, while retaining a light, humorous personality that hints at her potential once she makes it back out into the world again. Anna’s growth in the hospital is only hindered by her fear that she will return to who she was before once she leaves it. Halpern mixes Anna’s depression with humor, which come together in carefully written paragraphs like these:

Who the hell is running this freak stand? Today our afternoon movie was the “classic” ‘80s flick The Boy Who Could Fly. Do you know this movie? You should, since they rerun it on UPN just about every Sunday. If not, here’s a refresher: A mentally challenged boy (played by some guy named Jay Underwood, but whom I prefer to call Jay Underwear) lives next door to this boring girl. The boring girl has a brother and a mother, but no father because he killed himself when he found out he had cancer. The mentally challenged boy next door is always on the roof pretending he can fly. He actually believes he can, but no one else does. Until one day he and the boring girl are forced to jump off of a roof together and wheeeeee! They can fly! And, eeew, there was this totally gross kiss at the end between the boring girl and the mentally challenged flying boy. This movie was, like, directly out of the handbook on what not to show at a mental hospital. First of all, way to go, Dad! Not only did you just give up, but you killed yourself! And mentally challenged flying boy? What kind of lesson is this supposed to teach us exactly? I hardly think it wise to put the idea of flying into the heads of impressionable teenagers who are already battling the challenges of lunacy.

I have only recently discovered Julie Halpern, but I wanted to highlight the title since Banned Books Week starts today and Get Well Soon routinely makes the list. But now that I’ve read this book, I’m excited to look for other titles by Halpern with characters as real and believable as Anna Bloom. 

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Twenty-four-year-old Audrey Flowers hasn’t been home in a couple of years. She’s been on her “great safe adventure” leading her from Newfoundland to Oregon, where she lives in an apartment with Cliff, their walls covered in grips and holds for easy climbing. Winnifred, a tortoise that “comes with” the apartment, lives with Audrey, and narrates half of this return-home narrative when Audrey leaves her behind. Audrey’s scientist father is in a coma, and she believes that if she can get back to Newfoundland in time to say the right words in the right way, he will wake up.

Audrey is a “leapling,” born on the leap year, which means that although she is twenty-four, she has only had six birthdays.  She notes, “I unwind my arms and roll over to face the window. It is the solstice. Today or tomorrow. If you are born on a leap day, you can always tell. It is like a superpower. Not a very exciting one, but there you have it. You can recognize a solstice by the end-of-tether equality of the light” (236). Her father, a scientist interested in aging, passes on his passion for time and aging to his daughter. Audrey mentions near the beginning of the book that she remembers, “A man at Cambridge University has made a frog remember how to be a tadpole” (50). Grant concentrates on this theme to make Audrey appear both a grown woman and a young girl, and her return home to Newfoundland reverts her to her childhood self, where she is overcome by the memories of her dad, her Uncle Thoby, her imposing British Grandmother, and Toph, the man who once accompanied her on a visit to Newfoundland from England. All become wrapped up in a book that flashes back to Audrey’s childhood and stays there, as she creates a safe space of memory to hide out in throughout the aftermath of her father’s coma.

Jessica Grant is careful to weave the intricacies of Audrey’s “leapling” age into her personality, her reactions, and her understanding of the world. When she finds out about her father’s death, Audrey sends an email saying, “My dad is in a comma and waiting for me to open his eyes” (6), and these varieties of spelling, grammar, and even comprehension remain throughout the novel. Audrey’s almost movie-magic belief that her father will wake from his coma if she says the right words at his bedside is supported by other beliefs that become intertwined as a structure of her character. “Safe as Quantas” is her catchphrase, alluding to the fact that the Australian airline has been free of crashes, and she holds tight to that belief as she tries to protect those who are closest to her. It is a family-born idiom, “Herein lies the formula of my childhood: My dad plus Uncle Thoby equals Quantas. Which in our family means safe. Be Quantas. Be safe” (35). She phones Chuck and Linda, the couple she has left Winnifred with back in Oregon, late at night to check on Winnifred’s safety, asking, “I was just wondering if you have a fire alarm. And what kind of heaters. And where the castle is in relation to those heaters” (47). Audrey constructed Winnifred’s papier mache castle (sensitive to heaters and flame), and it is perhaps a reflection of her own inbetweenness as she retreats towards an arts and crafts mentality while also caring for something outside of herself and forming a close and important relationship. 

Audrey’s physical and mental age is conflated by her IQ-challenged state. When she phones her father and Uncle Thoby to report on her IQ results, which have been forwarded to her Oregon address in a manila envelope with other sundry affects from her grade school career, she is met with a different response than she expected, when her father says, “Listen to me, Audrey. You know what those tests measure. They measure how similar your brain is to the brain that made up the test” (71). Audrey, following his line of though, realizes what he means: “And then it dawned on me. Slowly. That what I had assumed was a high score was not a high score. It just sounded like a high score. It sounded like a not-bad grade, the kind of grade I never got in school” (71). But what is even more interesting than Audrey’s age, mental and physical, and the conversations that give way to her characterization, is her own train of thought that Grant follows through on. On the phone with her dad and Thoby, she determines that you can pronounce IQ as an acronym, “Ick” (71). This throwaway line is developed further, as she angrily says her father, “You knew…You knew my Ick was low and you didn’t tell me” (71). There is this timeless complexity to Audrey that lies in between language and thought process, as the reader follows her thought progression while it zigzags and crisscrosses and creates new meaning in intersections.

Come, Thou Tortoise becomes a nuanced mystery novel, similar in ways to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-time, but to the tune of Audrey’s favorite board game, Clue. Her time at home reveals her trouble with interpretation, as her childhood is undone, unraveled by the passing of her father and the connections that she follows through to the end of the novel: her Uncle Thoby, the imposing Toph, her British grandmother, and the quality of time and extending life that has followed her, scientific-like, since her childhood. It is also a break up story and a love story, a message from a man named Judd, a Christmas light salesman, “Thought you might like to know that someone is recalling you fondly. Also that someone is tracking your flight online. Hey, you’re over Ireland” (354), and the story of the relationship between the tortoise named Winnifred who is too used to being left behind: “My shoulders sagged. Would this be another Dubai. Would I be left behind for the next tenant. Would I be left” (314). Audrey is essentially home again and finding home, after living away throughout the majority of her postadolescence. It welcomes her back and allows her to stay, grown up without having to leave her childhood completely behind.