maiakobabe 's review for:

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke

2.5

challenging dark informative sad

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This is Radtke's second long, melancholic graphic novel mixing nonfiction and memoir. This one is an examination of loneliness and it's damaging and isolating effects. The author bares her own loneliness, which seems inherited from her reserved Midwestern family; she also weaves in quotes and research from scholars and scientists who have studied the topic, most prominently Harry Harlow, an American phycologist who bred rhesus monkeys and raised them in horrifying conditions. I remember reading an article about his research in a National Geographic magazine as a teen, so I was vaguely familiar with his work, but not the sadist extent of it. Radtke lays out the griefs and traumas of Harlow's personal life, which might have been what pushed him to raise animals in solitary confinement and watch it destroy them. Radtke does not attempt to excuse this behavior, noting instead what it says about human beings who are similarly separated from society. There was an opportunity here to talk about the damaging nature of prisons, but that does not come up in this book. It is a very solid and well-researched essay, thematically cohesive, and with poignant illustrations colored in a range of muted, moody tones. It's also very sad, which will probably land with some readers as cathartic and others as upsetting.