Imagine Wanting Only This
Ratings4
Average rating3.3
"A gorgeous graphic memoir about loss, love, and confronting grief. When Kristen Radtke was in college, the sudden death of a beloved uncle and, not long after his funeral, the sight of an abandoned mining town marked the beginning moments of a lifelong fascination with ruins and with people and places left behind. Over time, this fascination deepened until it triggered a journey around the world in search of ruined places. Now, in this genre-smashing graphic memoir, she leads us through deserted towns in the American Midwest, Italian villas, islands in the Philippines, New York City, and the delicate passageways of the human heart. At once narrative and factual, historical and personal, Radtke's stunning illustrations and piercing text never shy away from the big questions: why are we here, and what will we leave behind?"--
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(If you are a huge graphic novels fan, you may want to disregard this entire review.)
I'm not, as a rule, crazy about graphic novels. They tend, in my view, to be beautifully illustrated, yes, but text-wise quite disappointing.
This graphic novel is different. The text is rich, and thoughtful, and brilliant, and the illustrations are wonderful, too.
The story is a meditation on Radtke's own life, and it centers on her experiences with a site where a fellow who was obsessed with decay found his own demise. It's about death and ruin and destruction and degeneration, and it is very wise. Depressing, too, but very true.
My stars are based on the style of the drawing and the storytelling alone which were good overall. They both carried me to the end of the novel. However, I did have a hard time personally with the author's actions regarding those photos she stole from the memorial...and then never returned them! I kept waiting for her to reach out to Seth's family, but never did. This is my own bias, as I feel if you UE someplace, you take nothing but photos.
I appreciate the author sharing her experience, but this felt grim and nihilistic and didn't seem like it said much of anything. I walked away from it feeling a little numb and existential dread-y, which isn't what I want in a book.
