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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Nicely illustrated. I love the title. Interesting memoir, just nothing extraordinary.
veered between brilliant and infuriating. there's plenty of great reflections here on illness and impermanence, and some beautiful descriptions of historical events - but it veers a lot between that and self indulgence. while that's inescapably part of the memoir form for sure, Radtke takes it to new levels of selfishness. by far the most egregious was her stealing photos from an abandoned cathedral (that unbeknownst to her was a memorial for a Seth Thomas, local photographer), discovering that it was a memorial, neglecting to return the photos, and then taking them across Europe and losing them. For those photographs to then play such a tangential role in the book, and for her to handwave away having not returned them - it's not even self indulgent, it's grotesquely self absorbed.
Thomas's mother has written about the book here and having read that it has tarnished my opinion of the book considerably. It's disappointing because there's a lot to like here visually and textually, but Radtke's self absorption is deeply felt.
Thomas's mother has written about the book here and having read that it has tarnished my opinion of the book considerably. It's disappointing because there's a lot to like here visually and textually, but Radtke's self absorption is deeply felt.
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
I think maybe graphic novels aren't my thing although I didn't hate this. 3.5 stars. At first I was going to say it seemed pretty disjointed bc I felt like the author was trying to make basic life events tie together in a way they just don't - it's just a series of things that happened in her life without some of the deeper meaning she wanted to assign to it all. But the abandoned sites stuff was fascinating and I will say she tied it all together in the last 15 pages or so in a way that I found very evocative and that worked for me.
I think I read this at the perfect time. I, too, am I a transitional phase in my life (having recently moved from the Iowa City area - she's right, it is a town of its own but sill conquerable) and I could relate to Radtke's desire for something more than what's in front of you. I loved the theme of ruins running through the memoir, that they are skeletons of what used to be but strong bones of memory and moments that make us who we are.
Not as good as "Seek You" but an impressive first work. More of a series of musings rather than an solid narrative.
First of all, exquisitely illustrated. The story opens with the death of a beloved uncle from a disease Radke shares with him. She then travels through adventures, among ruins, contemplating mortality, her own, ours, whole cities, civilizations and ecosystems and arrives back at her central questions: "Who knows which pieces will matter? Who knows what will be significant when we have all moved on to whatever is waiting or not waiting?" And "We forget that everything will become no longer ours." Beautiful.
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
sad
fast-paced