Imagine Wanting Only This

(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.

A little too detached

I found some of the chapters very engaging. Some were self indulgent. But I think that is what the author was trying to convey. Reading this after the pandemic I wonder if I would have had a different opinion about world travel to desolate places. I loved her puncturing her own self opinion of herself as a graduate student. I cringe when I remember my own opinion of myself when I was younger. The book was worth the effort to read.