Sabrina by Nick Drnaso

genre: fiction graphic novel

When Teddy's girlfriend goes missing, his childhood friend Calvin welcomes Teddy into his home.  Teddy is not okay and while Calvin's job doesn't require much interaction with other people, he tries hard to give Teddy what he needs.  When information about Sabrina surfaces, though, soon both Teddy and Calvin are drawn into conspiracies and fake-news and there is no peace to be found in a world that's become so cerebral and screen-centric that actual human people really seem unable to offer any comfort at all.

Blah.  I did NOT enjoy this.  I chose it because it was on the Longlist for the Booker Prize but dang, it bored me.  The art is so drab and the people so homogeneous that I actually had a really hard time remembering who was who.  I'm sure there is a deeper meaning in there, something about universality or something, I just never felt invested enough in anyone to try and figure it out and it made it hard for me to feel connected to the characters. Some of the print was really small and hard to read and whole pages full of panels did really nothing to more the plot along.  I never felt any sense of resolution and all the conspiracy theory stuff just messes with your mind and then goes away.  The one plot thread that was interesting to me was the real grief of a loved one being lost and then, in our age of social media, not being allowed to just sit in your grief and instead you have the whole world shoving their opinions at you.  When there is tragedy it seems like there is no avoiding being run through the wringer of every critic that's on the internet.   It was interesting to see how that can affect those left behind.  I don't think it was it's bleakness that made me not  like it - I've read very bleak books that resonated and engaged me, this one just didn't.