I really enjoyed this graphic novel. The artwork is beautiful and the story is interesting - the characters are complicated and felt very real. I particularly loved Henny and Penny (of course).

The description of this book is both exactly what happens and yet so far from the reality of this book. Jim is worldly, witty, vulnerable and vulgar, heartfelt and heartbreaking. His deterioration comes on swiftly, more swiftly than a man so young should have been facing, and yet he lingers on and on in his pain until his split of bad and worse days end if only to give him peace. It is just a glimpse of the horrible reality of AIDS, rendered simply in devastating colour.

Likewise, Annemarie's fear and resentment don't just strain her family, they destroy it. What she can't control, she fears, then resents, then breaks. We see it first with the mug, a symbol of her daughters talents and exploits, bleached because a gay man touched it and still not deemed clean enough so she breaks it and throws it away. Her relationship with her husband, already strained, is touched in the same way and cannot be redeemed; eventually she breaks that too. The dogs... her relationship with her daughter, her son: nothing is safe from Annemarie's determination to make things the way she wants, and if they won't... well. It is a painful but so real depiction of a troubled mother, with troubled relationships. Wilson gives you some humanising glimpses into her, a little understanding, but it only makes her cruelty so much worse. "There are some things you protect yourself from knowing" is a line I know will haunt me for some time.

The art here is beautiful, and structured like both a diary and a memoir. Some of this feels immediate while other pieces are remembered in the aftermath, or looked back on much later. The art follows this same style, with some art rendered distinct as a recent memory, while others are blurred by the moment or sketched together later down the line. A past cobbled together from notes, diary pages, an idiot's guide to how dad works, and the daytime show Lou imagines up for Henny and Penny, Jim's two sweet, ill-fated dogs.

This was a painful read that doesn't shy away from the ugliness of what it uncovers over the course of one summer in 1985, but nor does it gloss over the beauty to be found as well. Lou's moments of understanding with her father, the tenderness she creates with Jim and the direction she takes for her life as a result, standing up to her mother in the same quiet, honest way she's had throughout. It is one hell of a coming of age for her, but well worth the travel to go with her.

*Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.*