Review by Booklist Review
A young couple, Will and Connie, arrive home from a tense car trip. After hearing that his mom's dog and a friend's brother have died, Will comments to Connie that deaths come in threes. After Will agrees to wash the dishes, Connie goes out on an errand; as the time passes with no word from Connie, Will thinks about all the scenarios in which Connie could have been taken from him. Exacerbating his dread is the book they were reading while they were in the car, about a couple who suffers a devastating loss and struggle to get past it. With spare text and many wordless panels, the illustrations carry the story forward. The drawings are simple, but packed with content. Many of the wordless panels, particularly those depicting difficult scenarios, add to the uneasiness readers feel as they draw their own conclusions. This is a story so rich and complex that it will require a second, and possibly third, reading. Readers should be alerted to sensitive material found inside, including stillbirth and suicidal ideation.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Designer and cartoonist Crane (The Clouds Above) lets tiny moments swell into a flood of emotion in his most accomplished and moving work yet. While his girlfriend runs errands, a man washes dishes, putters around the house, and follows loosely connected trains of thought: memories from their relationship, including a lover's spat while driving; the plot of the trauma-filled psychological novel he's reading; a conversation about the idea that bad things happen in threes; and ruminations on his tendency to imagine the worst in any situation. When his girlfriend runs late, all these thoughts coalesce into the fear of losing her and the realization of how much she means to him. At last he goes out in search of her, setting off a chain of events that come crashing together. From panel to panel, the narrative shifts between times, places, perspectives, fantasies, worries, and stories within stories within stories. But the more fragmented the plot becomes, the stronger the emotional thread binding the disparate elements grows, winding toward an unexpectedly transcendent climax. Crane's rounded characters inhabit carefully drawn suburban settings, drenched in nighttime shadows and colored in soft shades of green. The juxtaposition of simply drawn images and geometric patterns recall the style of Seth but with a warmer, sentimental touch. This a gently stunning meditation on loss, absence, and connection. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
A couple stuck in traffic on a road trip pass the time reading aloud to one another from a novel about young newlyweds whose relationship unravels after the death of their child. They put the book aside upon arriving home, where they fall into a bitter argument that only ends when the woman leaves to run an errand. As the man awaits her return, he begins to worry she may have abandoned him. Or what if she's been kidnapped? Or killed in an accident? Soon he's flashing between romantic memories from the past, dwelling on old resentments, longing for reconciliation, and dreading a future without her. Crane (The Clouds Above) exhibits virtuosic mastery of sequential narrative and page design, seamlessly shifting through time and space and layers of reality to capture his protagonist's increasingly frantic stream of consciousness. The effect is occasionally nerve-wracking, but brilliantly effective; tales so interior rarely deliver such visceral impact. VERDICT Crane's magnum opus is a stylistically adventurous evocation of how fear and grief create barriers to genuine intimacy. Not to be missed.
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