Tag Archives: depression

A Very Queer Gothic Ghost Story: The Narrow by Kate Alice Marshall

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the cover of The Narrow

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When I got a promotional email about this book, I asked the publisher if there was a queer main character, because I couldn’t tell from the description. It’s funny that I had to clarify, because this is a very queer book: the main character is bisexual, there’s an F/F romance, and there are several queer side characters. It’s a bit tricky to discuss without spoiling anything, but you can be assured of that.

This is a contemporary YA gothic with elements of dark academia. Eden goes to Atwood boarding school to escape from her unstable and sometimes dangerous home life. Her parents just spent so much money on their brother’s legal fees, though, that there’s nothing left for tuition. The school offers her a solution: she can stay tuition-free if she agrees to be Delphine’s companion.

Delphine was once Eden’s roommate. Then, one night, Eden and her best friend jumped the Narrow—a river running by the school that’s claimed many lives. The two of them landed safely on the other side, but Delphine, who had followed behind them, fell in. No one survives falling into the river, but by the time Eden returns to her room, Delphine has returned, soaking wet but otherwise apparently unharmed. Except, Delphine is different now. She lives in a building on Atwood grounds, completely isolated. She gets ill if a drop of unfiltered water touches her.

So, every year, her parents pay the tuition of a girl who will be her companion. They decontaminate themselves on the way in and keep Delphine company, staying there at night. Eden isn’t eager to take the offer—she’s never talked to Delphine about what happened that night—but she has no other options, so she takes the deal. Soon, she finds ominous notes left from the last companion, who was taken off campus suddenly.

Although their initial interactions are awkward, Eden is intrigued by Delphine. She’s not quite the girl she knew before. Her isolation has made her blunt, with a different perspective on things. Eden is surprised to find herself falling for her. And as she does, she is determined to figure out what’s really plaguing Eden, because it’s not medical—and it seems to be coming for her, too.

Eden and Delphine’s dynamic is interesting because Eden has a solid group of friends at school that she loves—but she also lies to them constantly. She doesn’t feel like she can tell them about her home life, or what happened the summer before. That’s why she hides her still-healing injuries and dodges personal questions. Delphine, though, asks Eden to promise not to lie to her: she doesn’t need Eden to like her, but she needs her to be honest about it. Eden finds herself being more vulnerable with this virtual stranger than she can be with her friends.

This friend group is another strength of the story, even though they don’t take centre stage. The three of them are all high achievers in their chosen fields: they’re artists, athletes, and academics. Eden feels like she can’t live up to the standards they set, that she’s an outsider in her own inner circle. Her issues with self-worth are tied up with her home life, and (possibly) depression. As things at Abigail House get more dangerous, she has to decide how much she values her own life.

The element I thought was most interesting in the book is also a spoiler, though. (Highlight to read:) If there’s anything better than a sapphic ghost story, it’s a sapphic ghost story where the ghost is also sapphic! There is an abusive sapphic character, which some readers always object to, but I think since there are 3-4 queer women main characters, it worked for me. (Also, I think it’s worth depicting abusive queer relationships, too. That’s why In the Dream House is so crucial.)

I also thought it was fun to read a ghost story where the ghost is very corporeal. I’m used to gothic ghost stories where the first part of the book, at least, it’s unclear whether the main character is just imagining things, but this ghost is hard to deny.

When I got near the end of the book, I realized there were several possible endings that I would not have appreciated. Luckily, it nailed the landing for me. If you’re a fan of reading YA horror or gothic novels, I highly recommend picking this one up ASAP!

Content warnings: depression, unspecified mental health issues, abuse, violence, discussion of homophobia

The Queer Graphic Novel That Had Me Sobbing at 3 A.M.: The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag

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The Deep Dark cover

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You’re all fired for not tell me how good this is.

I liked The Girl From the Sea, so I put a hold on Ostertag’s newest sapphic graphic novel, but I hadn’t heard anything about it, so I my expectations were pretty grounded. I definitely didn’t realize it was almost 500 pages; not the one-sitting read I was expecting… or so I thought.

I started reading this before bed, fully intending to get through a chapter or two before going to sleep. Instead, I was glued to the page until I finished it, after which I fully started not just crying but sobbing to myself. (It probably wasn’t 3 A.M., but give me some creative liberty here.) My roommate had to patiently listen to me weepily describe how good this book was. And then he offered me a chocolate chip cookie, which I definitely needed.

This review will have minor spoilers: the back doesn’t tell you what it is that happens in the basement every night, but it’s revealed early in the story. This is about Mags, a teenager who is trying to balance being the primary caregiver to her ailing grandmother, going to school, holding down a part-time job—and feeding her monster. Every night, she descends into the basement, offering her hand for the monster to feed from. It means she doesn’t get a lot of sleep on top of everything else, and it means she feels isolated: how could she ever have a real relationship, when she has such a terrible secret?

Mags is sleepwalking through life, as we can tell from the washed-out colour palette. She’s sleeping with a classmate from school who has a boyfriend. She doesn’t have a social life outside of these secret hook ups. Then, a childhood friend reappears: Nessa. Nessa is bisexual and trans, and she knows Mags’s secret already, because Mags told her when they were kids… except Nessa thinks she imagined it all. As Mags and Nessa spend more time together, Mags begins to wish for more from her life.

My heart broke for Mags, who is carrying so much on her shoulders. Her mother is horrified by her monster and stays distant from her. She thinks, “Mom says I’m so mature. And that’s code for not her problem anymore.” Her abuela is the one who forced her to start feeding her monster as a kid and to keep it a locked away secret. Her uncle, who was the other person in her family in the same situation, ran away with his monster and was never heard from again. She feels alone and like she doesn’t deserve real connection or support. She’s so tired that she’s beginning to faint at random times, and it’s obvious she can’t keep this up forever.

Ultimately, this is a story about accepting and loving the darkest, angriest parts of yourself—and allowing other people to love you in your entirety. Nessa offers Mags a glimpse of a possibility outside of just isolating herself. It’s painful and difficult, but it’s worth it.

As the title warns, this isn’t a light read. On top of Mags’s difficult emotional state and the discussions of intergenerational trauma, Nessa is also recovering from an abusive relationship, one that turned into stalking after they broke up. I also want to give content warnings for violence, death, child death, gun violence, and threatening suicide.

I did not mean to read this in one sitting, but I’m glad I did. I was immersed in this story, and I felt so deeply for Mags. It made the ending cathartic—hence the sobbing. This was obviously written from a personal place, and it’s so effective. This is a new favourite.

Love, Friendship, and Hair Care: Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith

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Wash Day Diaries cover

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In Wash Day Diaries, readers follow a group of four young Black women from the Bronx, getting a glimpse of their daily lives through their hair care routine and wash day experiences. Presented as five interconnected short story comics, we get to meet Kim, who can’t get her possessive ex-boyfriend to stop texting her and just wants him to leave her alone; Nisha, who finds her way into a sexy love triangle and doesn’t know who to pick or how to choose between the two men; Davene, who struggles with her mental health and doesn’t know how to reach out to her friends for help and support; and Cookie, who hasn’t seen her grandmother in a while due to their strained relationship, but agrees to help her take care of her hair regardless.

This is not a high stakes story, but Rowser and Smith are so incredibly talented, it nonetheless feels like a deeply significant reading experience. Their true talent lies in their ability to take this otherwise short, slice-of-life plot, and present so much backstory and character development in a way that is completely smooth and natural. By the end of it, even though you’ll have breezed through the whole graphic novel in one sitting, you’ll feel as though you have known these characters their whole lives.

The beauty of this story is in how healing it is: from the panels detailing each step of a character’s hair care routine, to the passages showcasing the ways in which said routine can provide a safe space for open communication and love, the entire novel feels like a warm hug. I’m not usually a fan of slice-of-life stories, especially when it only spans over a few days, because I often get the sense that I did not have the opportunity to truly connect with the characters. However, this is absolutely not the case here. Rowser and Smith laid out so many different types of love within these pages and managed to address incredibly complex and nuanced topics within such a limited space, it is a true testament to the quality of their craft.

I love each of these characters, but Davene and Cookie are tied for my favourites. Davene’s struggles with her mental health will feel deeply relatable to a lot of people, specifically when it comes to her executive dysfunction and her difficulty reaching out to those around her. Rowser and Smith also don’t try to resolve her issues in a perfect, little package by the end of the story: they take the time to recognize that as healing as it might be to spend time with a friend, your depression and anxiety will not magically resolve themselves. People will misunderstand what you’re going through, they won’t know how to discuss it with you without accidentally being invalidating, they might not even be aware that you’re struggling at all. The book recognizes and expresses these realities that are difficult to admit, but important to discuss—and shows us that although community and support won’t solve everything, they are nonetheless genuinely helpful.

Cookie is another favourite of mine, not only for her loving and electric personality, but also because her queerness and her strained relationship with her grandmother are so personal to me. Coming out to your family and having that conversation completely change your relationship with them, oftentimes for the worse, is sadly an all-too common experience for queer people. Being able to read Cookie’s story, and seeing that despite their fraught relationship, her and her grandmother managed to find the space and opportunity to talk, connect, and understand one another, once again, was very healing for me. Rowser and Smith, as always, presented the situation in a way that was very realistic and grounded, not trying to sell their audience some pipe dream or featuring a three step guaranteed process to getting your family to accept every facet of your queerness. The entire chapter details the complex and nuanced rollercoaster of emotions that Cookie experiences behind her otherwise outgoing and bubbly personality, making her an incredibly fleshed out and relatable character. I truly loved reading every single panel she was in.

As a whole, the novel does an impressive job of pretending to be a soft, easy, slice-of-slice story, while taking you through an emotional journey of love, connection, community, identity, happiness, friendship, and support. It’s a quick read, but I strongly recommend taking your time to appreciate every aspect of the book, including each character’s little quirks and habits, as well as the beautiful art style. Smith does a stunning job of making these characters pop on the page—the colours are eye-catching, each character’s design is so well executed, and the ways that the panels flow together brings the whole thing to life. It truly is a dynamic reading experience, and I guarantee that you will fall in love with at least one, if not all of these women.

Representation: Black main characters, sapphic Dominican main character, main character dealing with depression/mental health issues

Content warnings: homophobia, depression, mental illness, dementia, toxic relationship, stalking, sexual harassment

A Debut with Staying Power: Please Stop Trying to Leave Me by Alana Saab

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Please Stop Trying to Leave Me cover

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Please Stop Trying to Leave Me is a deeply engrossing, frenetic, and thought-provoking debut by Portuguese-Lebanese-American writer and screenwriter Alana Saab (she/her).

The story is narrated by Norma, a twenty-seven-year-old, privileged young woman living in present-day New York in the wake of a mental health breakdown. Described by Saab as “experimental”, the novel unfolds over eight months of Norma’s therapy sessions, which are interspersed with short stories from her manuscript. In therapy, Norma explores the “oblivion” that has plagued her since childhood. Though Norma previously only ebbed in and out of oblivion, she now finds herself stuck in it, unable to finish her manuscript and overwhelmed by the signs she believes God is sending her to break up with her girlfriend.

Early in the book, Norma’s therapist diagnoses her with major depressive disorder, depersonalization/derealization disorder, and immense anxiety. Norma’s therapist surmises that Norma is projecting meaning onto her external environment (i.e., signs from God that she should break up with her girlfriend) so that she does not have to do the internal work of reflection. Norma’s therapist believes that this is likely because Norma has experienced significant trauma.

Reading Please Stop Trying to Leave Me was an immersive experience. As someone who struggles with anxiety, Saab’s writing was so authentic that I had to put the book down several times to stop myself from getting swept up in Norma’s chaotic energy. Saab displayed such a high-level understanding of mental health issues and the ways in which they manifest that I was not at all surprised to learn she has a Masters in Psychology. It was also really refreshing that Saab wrote with such unflinching honesty about not only Norma’s traumas, but the reality of being in a healthy adult relationship, including the fact that ambivalence is a normal part of every relationship, romantic or otherwise.

My favorite short story from Norma’s manuscript was “Fertile Ashes”, wherein she charted her main character’s lifelong coming out journey and compared the art of fearlessly choosing for ourselves to the self-immolation and rebirth of a phoenix. I also really enjoyed how clever and incisive Norma was throughout the novel. No matter how heavy the subject matter, she managed to bring levity–whether she was criticizing the arrangement of the pillows on her therapist’s couch or cursing out Joe Biden for lying to the American people and upsetting her girlfriend.  

Saab is a masterful storyteller. Although I found Please Stop Trying to Leave Me difficult to get through at times, it was only because Saab had so expertly crafted Norma’s world that its chaos was palpable. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who’s ever wondered about how the mind works of someone who struggles with depression, anxiety, or dissociation, and to anyone who believes in the healing properties of writing.

Saab lives in New York with her partner.  She teaches writing workshops to survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, and sexual assault through the non-profit Here There and Everywhere. She also mentors incarcerated writers with PEN America’s Prison Writing Program. You can find Saab on Instagram at @alana.saab.

Trigger warnings for discussions of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and depersonalization/derealization disorder; recreational and prescription drug use; child sexual abuse; suicidal ideation; and graphic detail of a medical procedure.

Raquel R. Rivera (she/her/ella) is a Latina lawyer and lady lover from New Jersey.  She is in a lifelong love affair with books and earned countless free personal pan pizzas from the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! program as a kid to prove it.

Memoir of a Queer Coast Salish Punk: Red Paint by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe

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“I no longer wish to be called resilient. Call me reckless, impatient, and emotional. Even Indigenous. Call my anything other than survivor. I am so many more things than brave.”

One of my favourite books I’ve read this year is Thunder Song, LaPointe’s newest collection of essays, so I knew I wanted to go back read her memoir, Red Paint. While it took me a few chapters to get into, I ended up liking Red Paint just as much. This is a memoir that brings you right into the darkest, most painful moments of her life, including sexual assault, her marriage dissolving, and her miscarriage. It’s powerful and vulnerable, and I’m so glad I picked it up.

I’m always grateful to writers who takes readers into these vulnerable moments. LaPointe describes her mental health struggles and the coping strategies she used—from denial to self medicating to ceremonies and traditional medicine—to survive.

She also lets us into her relationships, particularly the one with her husband, Brandon, and her first love, Richard. These are complicated, realistic relationships—I was angry and frustrated with Brandon alongside LaPointe, but he was not painted as a two dimensional villain. I also felt for Richard as LaPointe reached out to him for comfort and nostalgia while knowing he wanted more from her than she could give. These relationships are so human: complex and layered.

(Because this is the Lesbrary, I’ll say that LaPointe’s bisexuality and the women she’s dated are mentioned in two chapters and aren’t the focus of the book—the romantic relationships explored here are mostly with these two men.)

While Thunder Song has a throughline of music, Red Paint incorporates the stories of LaPointe’s ancestors, especially three Coast Salish women she’s descended from. She tells the story of Comptia, her ancestor who married a Scottish man after almost her entire Chinook village died from smallpox spread by colonizers. LaPointe tries to fill in the gaps in her story: why did Comptia marry him? How did she feel being the sole survivor in her family? How does Comptia’s story connect to hers, generations later?

Red Paint definitely solidifies LaPointe as an author I want to follow. These two books are not easy reads, because they describe some of the darkest moments of her life, but they’re beautifully written and ultimately hopeful. LaPointe finds strength in her culture, family, and spiritual practices, fighting to reclaim what colonialism has sought to erase.

I do want to give clear content warnings for childhood sexual assault, detailed description of a miscarriage, description of a suicide attempt, anti-Indigenous racism, and colonialism.

If you are in a place to read that content, I highly recommend this and Thunder Song, especially if you live on the west coast of Turtle Island. I can’t wait to see what LaPointe writes next.

A Wacky Adventure Through Working Retail and the Multiverse: Finna by Nino Cipri

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Ava just broke up with her partner, Jules. They both work at an Ikea-like furniture store, but they’ve been managing to work different shifts after the breakup… until today. That’s already awkward enough before they discover a portal and are tasked with going through it together to retrieve a customer’s grandmother who wandered into it and is now lost in the multiverse. Don’t worry: in exchange for risking their lives, they will receive a gift card from corporate.

This was exactly what I was hoping it would be. Finna is a novella, and it feels almost like a montage as they run through different multiverses, including ones with carnivorous armchairs and hivemind employees. It’s a zany adventure that reminded me a bit of Doctor Who, especially the episodes that don’t take themselves too seriously.

Grounding the wackiness of the setting is the dynamic between Ava and Jules. You can see how much they care about each other and why they were together for so long—and why they broke up. Ava has anxiety and depression, and Jules is neurodivergent. Often their different ways of thinking end up with them clashing: Jules rushes into things and can be a bit erratic, which is hard for Ava to plan for and stresses her out. This isn’t really a second-chance romance story: there’s good reason they broke up, and because it’s so fresh, they have a lot of anger and hurt around it still. It’s more like a second-chance friendship, trying to recover any sort of friendship from the rubble of their breakup.

I thought the balance between the over-the-top adventure story and the very human main characters worked well. Jules is nonbinary and Black, and we also see how they have difficulty being accepted and fitting in, especially in combination with their neurodivergence. It creates layers of conflict: the life-or-death, sci-fi, world-jumping stakes of the plot with the complicated, painful complexities of their relationship as they’re forced to work together to survive. As you’d expect from the premise, it’s also an anti-capitalist story that explores the horrors of working retail.

If you’re a fan of books that use an out-there premise to explore characterization and relationship dynamics, I highly recommend this one. It was the perfect book to read in one sitting during a readathon.

Ghosts or Post-Partum Depression? Graveyard of Lost Children by Katrina Monroe

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After giving birth to her daughter, Olivia is struggling—not just with being a first-time mother, but mostly from being haunted. She hears voices whispering terrible things to her, a black-haired ghost is following her in her nightmares, and her body is deteriorating rapidly from her child’s never satiated hunger. And, despite her best efforts, she cannot help but notice that history is repeating itself for the worst.

Years before, her own mother tried to kill her. Obsessed with the idea that her child was a changeling—a substitute left by a supernatural being after kidnapping her own daughter—Olivia’s mother tried to make a deal with an evil spirit living at the bottom of a well, which almost cost her her life at only 4 months old. And while everyone always told Olivia that her mother had been a troubled woman with complicated health issues and a fragile state of mind, she is now questioning what really happened all those years ago, and what exactly is happening to her now.

Told from a dual point-of-view, jumping between the past and the present, Graveyard of Lost Children is the haunting story of motherhood and the cycle of fear and violence that gets passed down through generations of mothers trying to reach an unattainable standard of perfection.

If there’s one thing you need to know about me, it’s that motherhood is one of the most terrifying experiences I could imagine for myself. From being pregnant to taking care of a baby to raising an actual child, I get shivers down my spine just thinking about it. Graveyard of Lost Children was, therefore, essentially my biggest fears coming to life on page, right before my eyes, and I loved every second of it. As soon as I finished this book, it dawned on me that I’d just had the privilege of experiencing absolute genius, and I remembered why I so deeply love and appreciate the horror genre.

I would have expected this novel to be so far removed from my own life experiences that it would have too little of an effect on me to be a memorable story. However, having a lesbian take on that bone chilling role of motherhood and being able to see her, from the beginning, struggle with truly loving being a first-time mother, made Olivia extremely relatable to me, and I found it impossible to remove myself from the narrative. I felt so deeply connected to her, and it made the entire reading experience so potent.

The gem that Monroe managed to create with this novel really lies with its ability to convey how terrifying it is to become a mother for the first time. The narrative took its time to explore the anxiety and the feeling that people are looking at you differently or treating you differently or judging you for every little choice that you make. It then shows how an extremely guilt-tripping fear starts to settle in, making you question yourself and forcing you to wonder if you are in fact a bad mother who is making all the wrong decisions.

Monroe makes multiple fascinating literary choices with this book, one of which is writing a story about motherhood through the eyes of a lesbian main character. It suddenly becomes not just about the experience of motherhood, but specifically the experience of being the person within your couple who gave birth to your child. Olivia is a lesbian who does have a wife, but she is the one who underwent the pregnancy and gave birth to their daughter. This creates an interesting dynamic, because although it is clear that her wife wants to support her and understand what she’s going through, there is inherently a rift that is created between both women. As much as she wants to be there for Olivia, it is very difficult for her to grasp just how difficult it is to be a mother right after pregnancy.

Another indication that Monroe is an incredibly talented author is that she forces her reader into the position of an antagonist, driving the point of her story home in a deeply personal manner. Olivia is undergoing all these seemingly inexplicable horrors that are affecting her physically, emotionally, and psychologically. But, because she is a mother, everyone believes that it is all simply “in her head”; everyone, including you as the reader. Your entire reading experience essentially consists of you trying to figure out what is real, what isn’t, if you can actually trust the narration, and whether or not Olivia is losing her grip on reality through a postpartum psychosis or if there is in fact something supernatural at play. Her biggest issue is that she doesn’t know who to trust, because no one really believes her: her wife, her doctor, her friends. And although you are following her through her journey, Monroe chose to write Olivia’s chapters through a third person point-of-view which, especially in contrast with her own mother’s present-day chapters being told through a first-person narration, creates a distance between Olivia and the reader. By the very format of the book, Monroe forces you to perpetuate the cycle of doubt and pity by which first-time mothers often feel heavily attacked. It is a master class in making specific literary choices that not only make your story more interesting but are inherently tied to the message you are trying to convey.

Of course, aside from the genius that is subtly peppered through Monroe’s craft, she also has an amazing ability to write affective scenes and passages. Olivia spends so much time suffering from bruising and soreness and all kinds of pain that people feel after having undergone pregnancy, and although I have never come close to experiencing even an iota of that pain, I genuinely felt exactly what Olivia was going through. I felt my body aching as I was flipping through the pages, but I could not get myself to stop reading. It was a terrifyingly visceral experience that I would recommend in a heartbeat.

I appreciate that Monroe doesn’t try to sell you this fantasy of motherhood that is all sunshine and rainbows, but at the same time doesn’t villainize or discredit it. It was perfectly nuanced, very well written, and overall, horrifyingly entertaining.

Representation: lesbian MC, lesbian parents

Content warnings: postpartum-depression and psychosis, suicide attempt, attempted murder, thoughts of self harm, thoughts of harm to a baby/child, forced institutionalization, psychiatric hospitalization, paranoia, anxiety, death, graphic description of childbirth, manipulation, emotional abuse, medical trauma

A Cozy Queer Comic of Community: Matchmaker by Cam Marshall

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This was a surprise, last-minute entry in my list of favourite reads of 2023!

I stumbled on this while researching new releases for Our Queerest Shelves, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it was by a local British Columbia author/artist! I requested it from the library knowing pretty much nothing else about it except that it was queer and looked cute. I ended up devouring it in a couple days, and I’m now mourning that it’s over.

This follows Kimmy and Mason, best friends and roommates trying to survive the early 2020s in their early twenties. Kimmy is a nonbinary/genderfluid transfem lesbian, and Mason is cis and gay. As the title suggests, Kimmy is determined to set Mason up with his first boyfriend, which is made a lot more complicated during a pandemic when Mason is high risk.

This was originally a webcomic, which is obvious from how each page is set up to be somewhat complete in itself, but there is a narrative. We follow Kimmy and Mason through dating, breakups, and accumulating a growing group of queer friends. I loved these characters so much, and I was laughing out loud at several pages. It’s just such a cute, funny, and relatable read.

Kimmy is an unforgettable character. They’re over-the-top bubbly and silly, and they radiate confidence. I really appreciated reading about a fat transfem character who is so secure in themselves. They usually use they/them pronouns, but they also experience gender fluidity and change pronouns some days.

About halfway through the book, we find out Kimmy has depression, and they have to taper off their medication to start a new kind. As they go off their depression medication, they become an almost unrecognizable numb, closed-off version of themself Mason calls “Normal Kimmy.” Their friends support them through the weeks of this until they’ve adjusted to the new medication and begin to feel like themself again, including being able to better take in what’s happening around them.

This community of queer friends was the strength of this story. Not only have Mason and Kimmy been best friends since high school, but they also make connections with other queer people, quickly growing a supportive friend group. Despite the struggles they’re dealing with in terms of employment, the pandemic, dating, capitalism, and more, that rock solid foundation made this a comforting and cozy read.

This is not a short comic: it’s 280 pages. But by the time I finished it, I was already missing spending time with these characters.

I do have one complaint, though, and I hope it’s changed in later editions, because it doesn’t fit with the range of queer identities represented positively in this story: Kimmy refers to their lack of libido from being off their medication as being asexual, including triumphantly declaring, “I’m not ace anymore!” when their sex drive returned, which isn’t great, especially because I believe that’s the only mention of asexuality in the book.

That unfortunate inclusion aside, I really enjoyed this book. You can also still read it as a webcomic!

Susan reviews My Alcoholic Escape From Reality by Nagata Kabi

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Nagata Kabi is back with My Alcoholic Escape From Reality! The mangaka behind My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness and My Solo Exchange Diary returns with another memoir, this time about being hospitalised for acute pacreatis resulting from her alcoholism.

My Alcoholic Escape From Reality feels a lot more like a diary comic than any of her previous works. The art style hasn’t changed, although the monochrome colour scheme has shifted to orange now, but the manga as a whole feels tonally lighter and more consistent. I assume that this is a side-effect of it being written as one piece rather than a collection, but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. Despite the lighter tone, the frankness that she has in her previous books continues here. She is very open about her alcoholism and her depression, neither of which is resolved by the end of the book. She’s not a perfect patient by her own admission – she relapses, she gets angry about the restrictions on her life, she lies to her doctors – and she’s very explicit about her understanding of what would make a satisfying narrative about her experience and how it compares to what she’s living. They way Nagata Kabi personifies and visualises her conditions is more emotive than medical, which works great and stops the entire manga being medical professionals explaining things. There is still a lot of medical details involved – if you, like me, have no idea what pancreatis is, look forward to being educated! But the explanations aren’t overwhelming, which I appreciated.

One of the threads of My Alcoholic Escape From Reality is creating while dealing with not only serious medical conditions but also guilt about her work. She feels guilt for creating memoir at all, and for enjoying it when she knows how negatively her family feels about her work. (Her compromise seems to have been only involving them in the most surface-level scenes, rather than delving back into her feelings about them.) The realisations she goes through about her work and what it means to her to do that work is lovely to read.

My general recommendation for Nagata Kabi’s memoirs are that they’re good in the same way that Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette is good. They are both queer creators using their most raw edges and pain as entertainment, and cast an uncomfortable reflection back on the audience consuming that entertainment (… and the reviewer rating how well they depicted that pain, yes, please enjoy the mental knots I tie myself into). They are both funny and insightful, and that humour only makes their more serious points hit like a train. This ties into the point Nagata Kabi makes about narrative satisfaction – as a story, the most satisfying endings are the ones where she either relapses or recovers, and life isn’t that tidy; instead, it’s a narrative in progress, where she’s trying to be well and at least writing herself a smidge of hope for the future, and I respect that a lot.

If you want an untidy memoir told with Nagata Kabi’s usual bluntness and humour, I’d definitely recommend picking this up.

Content warnings: alcoholism, depression, hospitalisation and medical treatment

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found as a contributing editor for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business, or a reviewing for SFF Reviews and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. She brings the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Danika reviews Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

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I couldn’t tell you why I started listening to Why Fish Don’t Exist. I must have heard it recommended somewhere, because it was on my audiobook app favorites list, so I gave it a try as something that looked entertaining, but didn’t seem like it would requite my full attention. Like a podcast! I certainly didn’t realize it was queer, or that it was about mental health and the meaning of life.

I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version of this one if you can, because the author is the cohost of Radiolab and cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia, so this was a step above most audiobooks I listen to–it feels like it was made for that format. (Plus, there is an adorable audio bonus at the very end.)

This is ostensibly–at first–a biography of David Starr Jordan, a taxonomist who discovered a huge chunk of the world’s known fish species. It begins with a story about Jordan, about how his life work was catalogued in glass containers containing specimens shelved in the hundreds in his office–and the earthquake that sent them tumbling down. Surrounded by hundreds of preserved fish, broken glass, and specimen labels scattered across the floor, Jordan searched the debris, found a fish and a label he recognized, and stitched it directly to the fish itself.

How does someone continue to find meaning even when chaos seems to claim everything, Miller asks. When she was a child, her scientific father told her there is no meaning in life: there’s no creator, no plan, and we are mere specks in an endless universe. As she grew up, she struggled with suicidal thoughts, and went looking for meaning that doesn’t require a belief in God. Perhaps, she reasons, Jordan has that answer. So she sets out to do a deep dive into his life, hoping that it will lead to greater understanding.

This is an impossible book to summarize, and I don’t want to spoil it for you–which isn’t something I thought I would say about a nonfiction book about fish taxonomy. It takes some twists and turns, and it is simultaneously: a biography of Jordan, a memoir of Miller’s search for meaning, a collection of trivia, and an exploration of chaos and order. Miller realizes that perhaps the urge to have neat categories for all things (and people) is something that should be pushed back on.

Miller’s queer identity isn’t the focus of most of this book, but it is an important undercurrent. This is a book about imagining the world–and your place in it–complexly, and realizing that it’s a much more weird, unpredictable, and beautiful place than you could have predicted. This is definitely one of my favourite audiobooks I’ve ever listened to.

Content warning: David Starr Jordan was a white supremacist. This is discussed later in the book.