Review: Sabrina by Nick Drnaso

Sabrina was a revelation. I was aware that it had been long-listed for the Man Book Prize 2018, and it was the first graphic novel to do so. I knew what it was about. I knew that I wanted to read it.

What I didn't know what just how much this story would speak to me.

Sabrina is a woman in her 20s who disappears. She is last seen on her way home, outside an apartment just one block away. It's everyone's worst nightmare, the horrific stories that we see in the news, become fascinated by, but we are never quite truly able to comprehend. From there, author and illustrator Drnaso takes us into the lives of three people who have been affected by this--Sandra, Sabrina's sister, Teddy, Sabrina's boyfriend, and Calvin, an old friend of Teddy's who opens his home to his old mate. What follows is a story of the characters and how they struggle to cope with the situation. The many frames with no captions are eerily illustrative of the great emotional loneliness that each of the characters feel. They have no one to talk to and no way of expressing their emotions. Meanwhile, the discovery of what happened to Sabrina soon hits the news and more alarmingly, goes viral. From there, Sabrina's murder is discussed endlessly, the public interest becomes intense and soon derails into conspiracy theories, which in turn lead to all of the characters being the recipient of unwanted messages from people who are so unable to comprehend why such horror exists that they instead come up with some of the most outrageous theories. And all of this while they are trying to grieve.

This is a depressing and often grisly look at the worst parts of human nature and contemporary life. It's also a very important reminder that behind sensational news stories there are victims, ones who may be left voiceless and who will no doubt be struggling to comprehend how such a terrible event could happen to them. Drnaso also has much to say about technology and the ways in which, perhaps, it has not enhanced our lives. 

It left me sad, but it also left me thinking that next time I hear a horrible news story, I'll spare a thought for those who are most affected by it.

Highly recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more