Emilie Guillon

A roman à clef graphic novel about a French woman in her late teens and early twenties struggling with depression and bipolar disorder. I was a bit frustrated with the feelings it evoked in me, feeling sympathy for her struggles and annoyance with her tendency to complicate matters by drinking alcohol and skipping her medications.

Another complicating factor is her relationship with her father. In the book, as in real life, daughter and father work on a book of her life story together. At various points in the book, the author's stand-in seems to have second thoughts about doing the project and outright states that she is excluding events that she fears would make her look bad. Until the conclusion, the father is shown as relatively detached from her mental health journey but does pressure her to turn in script pages when she has her doubts. I wonder about their co-author dynamic and how it affected the final product.

With its air of a journal, the book gets a little to random at times with friends and relatives popping in and out with little development, but in the end, I liked the trains of thought the book inspired in me about my own attitudes toward mental health issues.… (més)