Book Notes - What To Do When I'm Gone and a few graphic novels

What to Do When I’m Gone, Time Zone J, Notes from a Sickbed, and more

Four books from the many I’ve read recently. These are part of the Sunday substack from July 30, 2023.

What to Do When I’m Gone: A Mother’s Wisdom to Her Daughter by Suzy Hopkins and Hallie Bateman

What to Do When I’m Gone is a book of notes …. a book of days written from the perspective of a mother to a child about how to go on after she’s gone. It may sound like a morbid concept, but it’s a book of wisdom and comfort, and it is beautifully done. It’s also wonderfully illustrated.

Starting with the hypothetical death and then “Day 1: Make fajitas,” the book is a series of notes in the mother’s voice, a map or blueprint for the daughter to navigate the days immediately after losing her mother and then through the first year and far, far into the future. This is a book of comfort. You hear the mother’s voice in the notes, loving, wise, sometimes funny. It is a book that will make you tear up, but it is also somehow also the book you hope you have—from your own mother—when you need it.

The “things” that are described in this book are not necessarily universal. If we were each to receive a manual from a parent on living, or on going on, it would be unique to our family. This book strikes me that way, unique but, at the same time, it has a bigger feel. I really enjoyed looking through this, and the art is wonderful. Some of the days….

• Day 6: Visit an all-night diner

• Day 8: Go Rollerblading

• Day 12: See a blockbuster movie

• Day 144: Bake a pecan pie

• Day 1,800: Sing the lullaby I used to sing to you

It goes all the way to day 20,000.

Note: you’ll need a good friend for many of the tasks, or a circle of friends. It’s a good reminder for those of us who don’t have those connections.

Time Zone J by Julie Doucet

I have long been fascinated with Julie Doucet’s work. I’ve talked about 365 Days many times. Doucet is a wonderful example of someone with an aesthetic that uses “all” the space. Her books are so densely drawn that, from the outside looking in, they might even feel a bit unreadable at times. They certainly challenge a viewer’s ability to “read straight through,” but they always are visually exciting to ponder.

Time Zone J is completely full of portraits of faces, her own and others in the story. When I first picked it up, I was blown away by the format of this book. Every single page is composed as a wall of really bold portraits. There are birds and other animals woven throughout, but when you open to any page, you are likely greeted by a wall of stacked faces. The book carries a head note that says “This book was drawn from bottom to top. Please read accordingly.” I kept that in mind as I read through, but I found it still difficult to be sure of the order of the narrative on each page. At the same time, there was the sense that it didn’t matter, that things could be read out of order and still make sense. The story is of a long-distance relationship. You might find it hard to follow. But the drawing style…. is intense and amazing. It’s a visual feast of black and white portraiture…. so bold and beautiful in a completely unique way.

Notes from a Sickbed by Tessa Brunton

Notes from a Sickbed was a really interesting graphic novel, and the style of it was stunning, especially in terms of the detail and the amount of time this had to have taken. This is the story of a period of time when Tessa (the author/illustrator) was struggling with an undiagnosed chronic illness. This graphic novel shows what it was like day-to-day for her and how she had to think about each thing that she might do as part of a domino chain. If she did something on Monday, it might affect her for several days after. If she knew she wanted to do something on a specific day or a weekend, she had to plan days in advance to try and make sure she would have the energy.

It can be very hard to read stories like this of chronic illness, but the way she’s managed to capture her experience of that time in a graphic novel style is stunning. She does some really interesting stylistic things, too.  I think the way she handles the panels is beautiful. There is lots of text woven in, and there are some beautiful and unusual compositions. There are full-page panels that have bunches of text boxes that are all interconnected on the page. There are pages that have multiple panels where very little changes between each panel, which echoes the stillness of the disease.

Notes from a Sickbed was wonderful to read. The individual chapters or installments are contained and can be read as standalones, but as a whole, you get the much larger story of this time and how frustrating it was, how difficult it was, how lonely it had to have been. I was really glad that her parents were part of the story and were available and able to help.  I thought this was a really stunning book.

Notes on a Thesis by Tiphaine Rivierie

At the same time, I had out another graphic novel “Notes” book,  Notes on a Thesis. This one also has a very distinct style of illustration. I initially checked this out partly because of my own history in academia. This is a very long book about a very long period of time involved in this character’s process of trying to complete a dissertation about Kafka’s The Trial.

It is an interesting story and an inside look at the sometimes grueling process of working on a PhD, especially in an area like English. The main character, Jeanne, idealistically plans on doing her dissertation in under three years. The book is the unfolding of how that is absolutely not what happens. You get a clear picture of Jeanne’s obsession with the whole process. It becomes the cornerstone of every conversation. It alienates certain people in her life, and that along with subthemes related to funding and graduate students being taken advantage of or ignored, or put off in a number of different ways, is all woven in.