Review by Booklist Review
UK-based illustrator Thapp divides this graphic novel about anxiety into six seasons (inspired by the calendars of some South Asian countries, her author's note explains), with spare narration accompanying her dramatically communicative art. It begins in high summer, a creatively rich and relatively carefree time. Across a 10-panel spread: "Little worries spring up, but I don't have time to spend with them. I'm too busy racing through summer, chasing the sun." Monsoon provides release for the pent-up feelings of late summer, as well as time for reflection. This slowing-down becomes more dramatic in autumn and halts completely in winter, before spring's reawakening. Thapp transmits the bulk of her story's emotion through her art, which combines colored-pencil precision and a digitally graphic look, using light and color palette to extraordinary effect. Besides her protagonist, who is both her and not-her and appears in most frames, motifs materialize across the seasons--in particular, a row of plants, their changing appearance analogous to the woman's health. In one stunning segment, a blue glow envelops and follows her, diminishing as she opens up to friends about it--and readers will recognize it immediately when it returns. Thapp's project is a visual-emotional banquet in which to get both lost and found.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In simple prose declarations and radiant colored pencil-and-marker illustrations, Thapp tracks her narrator's creative process and mental health through the lens of a six-season South Asian calendar. During high summer, the young artist at the center of this short, reflective work is invited to present a solo show at a gallery. But as the season of "endless possibility" gives way to the chaotic monsoon and the colder, drearier seasons, self-doubt and social isolation creep in. Though Thapp's subject matter and visual metaphors (namely plants) aren't uncommon, the notion that artistic and personal satisfaction might be cyclical rather than solvable via willpower, religion, or life choices, feels subtly radical. Thapp's narrator doesn't transform due to any particular epiphany. She feels better because it's spring and "I slowly start adding color back into my days." Thapp is sparse with text, letting her artistic elements-- appealing compositions, pleasing patterns and symmetry, lush seasonal color palettes--shine instead. The result gorgeously depicts the delicate dance between the internal and natural worlds, and offers soothing space for anxious readers to reflect on their own mood cycles. Agent: Monico Odom, Odom Media Management. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A U.K.--based mixed-media illustrator offers a pictorial representation of her experiences with stress, anxiety, and depression. Thapp creates a character portrait of a woman whose emotions she charts through six seasons, inspired by the "calendar used by some countries in South Asia." Her protagonist is a nameless professional artist whose life and inner world she depicts through hand-drawn and computer-rendered illustrations arranged in single units or in multiple-unit tiles. She employs few words to render this portrait, and those she does use serve as descriptive captions or clarifiers to tie together sequences of images. In the first section, "High Summer," Thapp represents the narrator's carefree emotional phase with warm-colored images and symbols of life (blooming flowers, butterflies). "Summer is good to me," she writes. "I am powered by a thousand suns. Charged with confidence--a fickle friend that only comes out to play in the sun." In "Late Summer," the author reveals the hyperactivity of the previous season giving way to "a worry of not making the most" of opportunities. Here, the colors are brighter and harsher, and an inner voice awakens to torment the narrator with doubts, especially about her productivity as an artist. "Monsoon" brings grayer images and a narrator who is more lethargic and isolated. She charts her continued struggle with the voice of doubt, increasing moodiness, and the "blue light" of depression through autumn and winter, which Thapp represents with subdued colors and striking images drawn on black backgrounds. The narrator eventually emerges from her "cocoon" of loneliness in "Spring" and begins to gradually add "color back into my days." Though narratively spare, the woman narrator and the subject matter she tackles--the cyclicality of emotion--work together to create an engaging personal story that, through subtle symbolism, makes for a rewarding reading experience. A colorfully heartfelt evocation of thought and emotion. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
