Swallow Me Whole

I really liked this. It's basically the story about two siblings dealing with school, friendships, family, significant others, mental disabilities, sanity, love, and finding your place in the world.

The art is beautiful and creative and just fun.

I read this all in one go, and it was a very enjoyable read. I loved all the characters - with all of their many, many flaws - and the story was brilliantly written, scripted, and worked, from beginning to end.

One thing that really stuck out to me was the relationship at the heart of this story: the two siblings, Ruth and Perry. In a world where fictional sibling relationships are constantly wrought with conflict, anger, jealousy, and avoidance, it is completely refreshing to see a close-knit, show more loving relationship between two kids. And not just two kids: two step-siblings of different genders and pursuits. The way they relate to each other and spend time together and stick out for each other and relate to their blood-related and step-parent(s) is beautiful and truly engaging. As the child of two re-married divorcees, the family chemistry in this story really reached out to me, and it was just remarkably written.

If you have the time, pick this up and take a look. show less

I found this book to be a very compelling graphic novel, perhaps because of my brushes with schizophrenia (in my friends, not in myself) and hallucination. Ruthy and Perry's world is a world that cannot admit other people; eventually Ruthy cannot even allow Perry in, too.I was deeply pleased by the way that it presented various hallucinations as not horrific but rather interesting. I don't believe that hallucination is an unmixed blessing, perhaps due to reading too much William James, and yet it's also true that they lead away from other people, that they lead to ever-increasing aloneness and, yes, misery in the long term. Misery physically, if not misery mentally. But that doesn't mean that in the logic of hallucination frogs and show more locusts are evil; they're merely what they are...In any case, the alienation that Ruthy and Perry both experience - Ruthy in particular - is very familiar to me, with or without the mental illnesses thrown in. This book does an excellent job of bringing the simple strangeness of high school to life. Who really knows anybody else, then? Certainly I didn't. For all I know, everyone's internal life was as varied as Ruthy's, but they were better at hiding it. I never thought to ask. show less

I found this book to be a very compelling graphic novel, perhaps because of my brushes with schizophrenia (in my friends, not in myself) and hallucination. Ruthy and Perry's world is a world that cannot admit other people; eventually Ruthy cannot even allow Perry in, too.I was deeply pleased by the way that it presented various hallucinations as not horrific but rather interesting. I don't believe that hallucination is an unmixed blessing, perhaps due to reading too much William James, and yet it's also true that they lead away from other people, that they lead to ever-increasing aloneness and, yes, misery in the long term. Misery physically, if not misery mentally. But that doesn't mean that in the logic of hallucination frogs and show more locusts are evil; they're merely what they are...In any case, the alienation that Ruthy and Perry both experience - Ruthy in particular - is very familiar to me, with or without the mental illnesses thrown in. This book does an excellent job of bringing the simple strangeness of high school to life. Who really knows anybody else, then? Certainly I didn't. For all I know, everyone's internal life was as varied as Ruthy's, but they were better at hiding it. I never thought to ask. show less

Summary: Ruth and Perry are stepsiblings, but they share a distinct bond: both of them struggle with seeing and hearing things that others can't. He sees a small wizard who forces him to draw; she sees bugs where there aren't, and hears the voices of the animals she collects. Adolescence is hard enough, with its struggles with authority, issues with fitting in, tempestuous relationships, and a complicated home life, but when you factor in mental illness, it starts to border on too much to cope with.

Review: This is a dark, dark book, one that was not easy to read. I mean that both in a literal and a metaphorical sense. It is graphically very dark, lots of shadows and black spaces and sketchy lines, oftentimes overwhelming the characters. show more The text is also typically very small and scratchy, enough so that it is frequently difficult if not impossible to read. It's clearly a stylistic choice, and it goes along with the tone of the story, but it does make you work (and squint) to understand what's going on. It's also not an easy book emotionally. There are no easy answers given here; no answers at all, most of the time, and you have to look very hard to find the hope in some very bleak situations. What was maybe the most painful was that these kids had no one - their parents didn't seem particularly aware of what they were struggling with, and they didn't even really open up to each other. "Harrowing" is maybe not *quite* the right word, but it's not far off, either. 3 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I didn't exactly enjoy it, per se, although I can see that it would be particularly powerful in the hands of someone who is struggling or has struggled with mental illness, particularly teens. show less

This is a remarkable graphic novel. The black & white art is fantastic. Parts of it are beautifully observed, perfect realism, while others are completely fantastical — but the fantastic is intended to represent mental illness, so as far as I know, it may be realistic, too. I did read this in one sitting, so it passes the 'suck me in' test (no pun intended). I can't say that I entirely enjoyed it, but I doubt that it's intended to be entirely enjoyable. My one reservation about Swallow Me Whole is that it nags at me that I can't tell exactly what happened near the end.

Merideth says: I honestly don't fully know what I think about this book. I respect the craft that went into it. Powell has a sweeping art style, with few greytones, that flows across the page. However, his experimentation with panel order and text placement make this book more difficult than it should be. It's a hard book to read, meaning that it is technically hard to decipher what is happening on the page. Powell does do a good job of illustrating schizophrenia, the voices and loss of time that are hallmarks of the illness. However, I wish that he had spent more time developing his characters, and had chosen the moments he shows the reader more carefully.

This is such a great book. The illustrations are beautiful and I think the author portrays an interesting take on mental illness. He shows how something like schizophrenia can be integrated into someone's life without them even questioning it.