In
A Graphic Novel
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A poignant and witty graphic novel by a leading New Yorker cartoonist, following a millennial's journey from performing his life to truly connecting with people
Nick, a young illustrator, can’t shake the feeling that there is some hidden realm of human interaction beyond his reach. He haunts lookalike fussy, silly, coffee shops, listens to old Joni Mitchell albums too loudly, and stares at his navel in the hope that he will find it in there. But it isn’t until he learns to speak from the heart that he begins to find authentic human connections and is let in—to the worlds of the people he meets. Nick’s journey occurs alongside the beginnings of a relationship with Wren, a wry, spirited oncologist at a nearby hospital, whose work and life becomes painfully tangled with Nick’s.
Illustrated in both color and black-and-white in McPhail’s instantly recognizable style, In elevates the graphic novel genre; it captures his trademark humor and compassion with a semi-autobiographical tale that is equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching—uncannily appropriate for our isolated times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though snarkier and smuttier than E.M. Forster, New Yorker cartoonist McPhail's graphic novel debut comes across as a book-length illustrated version of the Howard's End epigraph: "Only connect!" Nick is an artist whose cringey awkwardness and roiling inner monologues ("Is this what human interaction is?") block him from forming relationships. He compensates with personas, such as posing as a sad young artist sketching women on the train (until he discovers they find it creepy rather than cute). Even a joyful-seeming one-night stand with brash young doctor Wren is drawn in a one-page vignette as a kind of theater (with curtains and stage) to demonstrate Nick's disconnection ("I didn't feel anything and performed every emotion"). The narrative takes an unexpected turn when Nick suddenly decides to say something personal in a glorious scene that mixes the rapturous (a montage of fantastical lush color frames in this cool and restrained black-and-white book) with the comical (the man he's connecting with is his plumber). But though Nick's arc toward authenticity is well rendered, it's too easily won, with a world willing to accommodate him the second he opens up and a convenient manic-pixie love interest. This smart if somewhat uneven character study bangs together insecure urban hipster humor with raw emotion.
