Swallow Me Whole

Swallow Me Whole
By Nate Powell
Published by Top Shelf Productions. $19.95 USD

I had quite a different experience reading this graphic novel than about any other I can recall. Now, the fact that it took a few sittings to read it isn't that different. After all, it's a pretty long read. The pages aren't numbered but must exceed 100, and even though there's a good deal of silent panels and pages, they still require a bit of study, you know?

No, the difference here is that even after my first, brief reading of ten pages or so, I could tell that this was a book I could only deal with in a certain frame of mind and with enough energy and concentration. I mean, it was clear you had to approach the book with respect.

This is a brooding, delicate, surreal look at a pretty, charming young woman unraveling from schizophrenia. That's what it's about, so if you're looking for the quirky charm suggested by the front and back covers, with their pretty autumnal colors, then be forewarned. I don't say, look elsewhere, because I do think this is a very charming book, but more importantly, it's a book that really deserves to be read by a wide audience. Let's face it: North American comics are still in their infancy as far as taking on adult subject matter, so the mere fact that a cartoonist takes on a teenager's mental illness in a story is already noteworthy and possibly award-worthy if he or she delivers something halfway competent. Powell is way better than that. Although this is the first work of his that I felt was entirely successful, I also don't feel like readers have to worry that he's achieved his masterpiece already. This is someone to keep reading.

Now, I do take some exception to the back cover describing this as a "love story"--I didn't get that at all, unless the love story is somehow the love between the protagonist, Ruthy, and her brother Perry. And while their relationship is probably the most vividly drawn, mainly because Perry is the only one Ruthy spends much time talking to, the fact is that Ruthy slips away from Perry, or vice-versa. Perry has some fascinating scenes early on where we see his own mental illness manifest in a tiny wizard ordering him to draw pictures for him before he'll go away. Like Ruthy's collection of insects and other compulsive behavior, it's a way for Perry to bring order to his world. But unlike Ruthy, he's able to mostly cast the hallucinations aside, or shunt them, as he grows into adolescence and gets a girlfriend.

Powell has a great many gifts on display here, from his confidence in using tiny, mumbled handwriting in word balloons to convey the fog in Ruthy's head to the many surreal, haunting images, from the tiny, cartoonish floating soul of Ruthy's "Memaw" to the huge African bullfrog and the swarm of bugs. He's great at body language as well. It's easy to tell when Ruthy is floating down the street that it's not a pleasant, freeing experience from the way her back is hunched over, like she's being pulled along from an invisible line around her midsection rather than her own accord. It also works well that Powell plays most of the events in a lower register. There aren't a lot of big epiphanies, and several scenes don't seem particularly important in and of themselves, but cumulatively add up to a fleshed-out portrait of a young life's many trials and occasional triumphs. There isn't a pervasive sense for almost the entire book that Ruthy might really fail--that's just not how these things go very often, and when they do, one usually knows from almost the start. Which makes the ending more devastating, almost like Powell bet on the wrong horse in Ruthy over Perry. It actually stings, that ending.

These are good times for comics, creatively, but although I expect I'll read graphic novels this year that will be more entertaining, or clever, or better drawn, I doubt many will hit me emotionally as much as this one. I'll be feeling this one for a while.