In.

I love Will McPhail's New Yorker cartoons, most especially his city pigeons. This graphic novel features humans who creepily look like the pigeons around the eyes! It's a story of a guy, most likely himself, who's pretty bored and miserable in a city (London?), looks for love, neglects his family until they really need him, and meets-cute an oncologist, immediately knowing she's too good for him. In his daily rambling life, he dreams up the silliest coffee shops imaginable. In the most stressful episodes, he falls out of his b&w sketched world and into deep chasms of color, fire, and flame. This is a difficult but worthy read.

An entitled and oblivious white manchild/artist trundles through life convinced his biggest problem is he is not talking honestly to others. On top of the oh-so-witty dialogue, several symbol-laden dream-sequence type scenes and a big, dumb coincidence near the end, there is also an attempt to mash up the manic pixie girl and magical negro tropes into a single character.

Worst of all everyone is drawn with hideous circular googly eyes. Everything else looks fine, but it's like a different person came in to erase and redraw all the eyes in a frantic all-nighter. So distracting.

Super meh.

Graphic novels are so intriguing - it's such a different way to tell/read a story. This one is beautiful - as so many are. The art is exquisite and captures emotion through nuances. The title refers to the ability to be 'sucked in' or immersed or honest without social barriers - referencing the feeling the narrator had in childhood of the thrill of a drainage-style water slide where you fall through the pipe and emerge on the other side exhilarated and feeling like you truly experienced something. Where does any of that childhood exuberance and presence go in adulthood and social circles? So many of our interactions with others are 'cocktail conversation' which fails to reach any true connection, even with our own family members in the show more busy-ness of everyday life. That is what the narrator is seeking - and finds - with a few rare relationships: a neighbor, a new love interest (that has a personal conflict), and finally with his sister and his mother. And when that happens, the pictures change to color, starting with the characters' eyes - truly seeing one another. With some risk and vulnerability, they are 'in' and changed for it. Very germane to our times and so spot-on for human nature - it made me want to hug those few people in my life I am lucky enough to be real with. show less

I think I experienced a bit of synesthesia while reading In by Will McPhail.

The book is largely done in sketch-like black and white, the characters little more than outlines on a white background, except for moments when Nick, the main character, experiences real human connection. As soon as he makes that connection, the pages burst into fully painted, dynamic scenes, and I oftentimes felt like I could hear the sounds of crashing waves or the swell of some imaginary film score in my head. It made the whole thing quite extraordinary.

Nick is an illustrator, disaffected and disconnected from everyone in his life. He goes to a bar and performs sadness just to see what it might feel like. While he is there, he meets a woman and goes home show more with her, but feels nothing. Nick can’t seem to stop holding everyone he knows at arm’s length, not even his mother.

And then, one day, he decides that he needs to say something that matters instead of having another meaningless conversation. He takes a small step, and says something real to a plumber who comes to fix his toilet. In a moment, everything changes, and a whole vista of emotion and experience opens up in his mind. It’s like Dorothy stepping into Oz or a movie changing aspect ratios to widescreen. It’s thrilling and invigorating and over too soon.

Nick spends the rest of the book chasing that feeling, trying to open up and let the world in, sometimes with mixed results. When Nick starts uncovering this hidden well of feeling around him, not everything that comes inside is good or happy. The moments of color are an effective emotional gut-punch as the story continues down more fraught pathways.

One of my favorite parts of the book is a weird little story Nick tells about a slide at his favorite water park where he sees something unexplained and possibly supernatural. It gives the story just the right amount of spooky unreality, a touch of deathly sunlit horror.

I loved this book and would recommend it highly.

Full disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book from NetGalley. This review was originally posted at Full of Words. show less

I really, really loved this. The book was laugh-out-loud funny, which turned out to be a brilliant disguise so its making me cry would be a real sneak attack. The art, with its combo of beautiful backgrounds and hilarious backgrounds, realism and ridiculous bubble eyes, fit perfectly.

Graphic novel delicata e toccante.
Il tema trattato mi pare più attuale che mai, si parla infatti di incomunicabilità e di accettazione del lutto.
Il protagonista soffre fondamentalmente di solitudine, una solitudine che non sa affrontare né tantomeno superare, soprattutto quando sta in mezzo alla gente, ma anche con i familiari.
Spende il suo tempo in serate vuote, spese a girovagare in bar mediocri privi di interesse senza uno scopo preciso e senza riuscire a rapportarsi con gli altri.

Da buon introverso mi sono calato molto nei panni del protagonista in alcune tavole, soprattutto nelle situazioni imbarazzanti in cui non sappiamo cosa dire per rompere il ghiaccio con persone che non conosciamo bene, quando vorremmo entrare in una show more connessione più profonda con qualcuno ma non possediamo gli strumenti adatti per farlo, quando la paura ci blocca e per sfuggirle riusciamo a pronunciare solo qualche frase sciocca e banale.

Per la maggior parte le tavole sono in bianco e nero, tranne nelle poche tavole che rappresentano la parte inconscia del protagonista, la corazza da scalfire, la fortezza blindata del suo io da abbattere per riuscire a darsi pienamente agli altri e sentirsi parte del tutto.
Il tratto è bello e preciso ovunque e, nelle tavole a colori, è quasi pennellato e rappresenta benissimo l'inconscio del protagonista come un sogno, o meglio un incubo.

Interessante la distribuzione delle vignette sulle tavole e l'utilizzo massiccio degli spazi bianchi delle pagine che diventano essi stessi elementi di narrazione, accentuando ancora di più la sensazione di solitudine e straniamento del protagonista.
Non sarà la miglior graphic novel del mondo, ma è piacevole e mi sento di consigliarla. Introspettiva. show less

This is a humanistic work of art. This book makes way with the human experience, interactions between family members and romantic interest much in the same way as Oliver Assayas did with Summer Hours and Terence Malick did with The Thin Red Line.

This book is the best graphic novel that I’ve read since Adrian Tomine’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist. It reminds me a lot of the deeply human experience of reading Colum McCann’s masterpiece, Apeirogon.

The book follows Nick, a young illustrator, who suddenly feels he can’t be stuck in his same forms of interactions. Opening up to a plumber starts shaping consequences that are very strange to Nick, and he dithers into entirely new worlds.