All of it is delicately balancing wry humor (such as about coffee shops with silly names he visits daily) with poignancy. Much of this is very moving at one point his young nephew says he wants to see him more, and it is a poignant moment. Then someone close to him gets sick-okay, it's cancer-so he needs to learn how to make connections there this pushes him, makes it urgent.

But he knows this is not enough for her, nor for him. She's an oncologist, so he begins to ask her about that work, though-given his well-ingrained personality-his inclination is just to joke around a bit and have sex. He has had girlfriends, he has had a couple friends, but he is most connected to his sister, his nephew, and his mom, who understand him as socially distant though friendly, but they too know he needs to make real and deeper connections with humans.Īt one point he meets and begins dating a woman, though he doesn't yet know how to talk with her. The guy has problems relating to people, doesn't know how to have conversations that get beyond the surface level, but he really wants to. I am told this is semi-autobiographical, as it features a guy who does illustration/art for a living. One of my top ten graphic novels of the year, In, a first graphic novel by Will McPhail, whose work is best known in the US through his New Yorker cartoons, maybe. Illustrated in both color and black-and-white in McPhail’s instantly recognizable style, In elevates the graphic novel genre it captures his trademark humor and compassion with a semi-autobiographical tale that is equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching-uncannily appropriate for our isolated times. Nick’s journey occurs alongside the beginnings of a relationship with Wren, a wry, spirited oncologist at a nearby hospital, whose work and life becomes painfully tangled with Nick’s. But it isn’t until he learns to speak from the heart that he begins to find authentic human connections and is let in-to the worlds of the people he meets. He haunts lookalike fussy, silly, coffee shops, listens to old Joni Mitchell albums too loudly, and stares at his navel in the hope that he will find it in there. Nick, a young illustrator, can’t shake the feeling that there is some hidden realm of human interaction beyond his reach. A poignant and witty graphic novel by a leading New Yorker cartoonist, following a millennial's journey from performing his life to truly connecting with people

In will mcphail