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A review by museoffire
Lulu Anew by Joe Johnson, Étienne Davodeau
4.0
This is a quiet look at the turning point in a middle aged woman's life when she spontaneously abandons her family to explore the world she's let pass her by while she's spent the best years of her life taking care of other people.
Lulu is in her forties living in the French countryside. Wife to an ungrateful drunk of a husband who's favorite phrase is "I told you so" and a mother to spunky, puckish twin boys and a teenage daughter. While out on a fruitless job interview in a nearby town she is suddenly seized with the notion that she should spend the night. One night turns into two, two to three and before long her friends and family have no idea where she is or what she might be doing. That Lulu is, for the most part, just as clueless is part of the quiet magic in this gentle, thoughtful graphic novel.
We begin at a late evening gathering of Lulu's friends who are trying to piece together Lulu's journey. They're caring for Lulu's children in her absence and working out what led to Lulu's current circumstances. There's a wonderful sense of community and family between everyone. No one is really angry at Lulu in fact as we delve deeper into what a bore her husband is and what a thankless job she's really had all these years we can see that they even understand and empathize with her need to escape. The story is told primarily in flashbacks as we see the day Lulu "disappears" and follow her story until we arrive back at the same night her friends have gathered together.
Etienne Davodeau's color palette is part of what makes this beautiful book so hypnotizing. He never strays very far from rich browns and oranges with the occasional deep blue of an ocean or the night sky. Lulu wears this weirdly adorable ill fitting orange sweater that makes her appear by turns homeless but then strangely youthful. There's also sharp injections of deep black, her daughters black, jagged hair and the black shirt she's always wearing create a great contrast to Lulu's warmer look, you can see how hard her daughter tries to distance herself.
The translation is excellent as well, this isn't a text heavy graphic novel but what there is has a wonderful rhapsodic quality to it.
I really loved this. One of those terrific reading experiences where the only thing that really happens is a moment in someone's life yet its the most engrossing thing you've ever seen in the moment you experience it for yourself.
Lulu is in her forties living in the French countryside. Wife to an ungrateful drunk of a husband who's favorite phrase is "I told you so" and a mother to spunky, puckish twin boys and a teenage daughter. While out on a fruitless job interview in a nearby town she is suddenly seized with the notion that she should spend the night. One night turns into two, two to three and before long her friends and family have no idea where she is or what she might be doing. That Lulu is, for the most part, just as clueless is part of the quiet magic in this gentle, thoughtful graphic novel.
We begin at a late evening gathering of Lulu's friends who are trying to piece together Lulu's journey. They're caring for Lulu's children in her absence and working out what led to Lulu's current circumstances. There's a wonderful sense of community and family between everyone. No one is really angry at Lulu in fact as we delve deeper into what a bore her husband is and what a thankless job she's really had all these years we can see that they even understand and empathize with her need to escape. The story is told primarily in flashbacks as we see the day Lulu "disappears" and follow her story until we arrive back at the same night her friends have gathered together.
Etienne Davodeau's color palette is part of what makes this beautiful book so hypnotizing. He never strays very far from rich browns and oranges with the occasional deep blue of an ocean or the night sky. Lulu wears this weirdly adorable ill fitting orange sweater that makes her appear by turns homeless but then strangely youthful. There's also sharp injections of deep black, her daughters black, jagged hair and the black shirt she's always wearing create a great contrast to Lulu's warmer look, you can see how hard her daughter tries to distance herself.
The translation is excellent as well, this isn't a text heavy graphic novel but what there is has a wonderful rhapsodic quality to it.
I really loved this. One of those terrific reading experiences where the only thing that really happens is a moment in someone's life yet its the most engrossing thing you've ever seen in the moment you experience it for yourself.