As the least Canadian member of the Graphixia crew (being neither a national nor studying there) I felt it was about time that I came of age by writing about a Canadian comic about coming of age. I have been waiting eight years to read another work by Geneviève Castrée and last month I was finally able to get my hands on Susceptible, her latest book and a memoir about her childhood in Québec.
I first came across Castrée’s work in Drawn & Quarterly Showcase in 2005. Each issue showcased three up-and-coming artists and Castrée was featured in issue three, alongside strips by Sammy Harkham and Matt Broersma. In the credits she is listed as Geneviève Elverum, her married name which she appears to have used only briefly.
I initially picked up the book because I was fascinated by Castrée’s attractive and distinctive artwork on the cover. Inside, her dreamlike story ‘We’re Wolf!” begins as a meditation on depression before moving on to thoughts about love and our place in the world. It was the art that struck me first however, with meticulously detailed illustrations in fine-nibbed pen, and ink wash. There are rarely panel borders and often one image fills the whole page. Each page may have hundreds of tiny marks on it but it never looks cluttered, this is a strip that always feels spacious and delicate, both in illustration style and emotion.
The strip opens with a depressed girl reading a comic in bed, the book looks a lot like Tintin in Tibet. Later the pages blossom into life as she meets a boy riding the elephant that was originally a manifestation of her depression. They leave the elephant behind and climb into a snowy mountain landscape. The clear deliberate line work also brings to mind Hergé’s Himalayan adventure. Both characters resemble Castrée, creating a feeling that this work stems from autobiography.
A double page spread blooms into bright colour and features the two characters surrounded by an intricate pattern of green leaf covered branches. In bright red circles in the corners of these pages Castrée writes, “What will it take to seduce you?” but the question is immaterial, I am already smitten.
Despite falling for her work in a big way I found other books hard to obtain here in the UK. Castrée has released a few books with Montreal based publisher L’Oie de Cravan including book/LP packages. She also recorded drone/folk/pop music under the name Woelv and more recently, Ô Paon, and has stated that both drawing and music are forms of meditation to her. When I began to see the pre-publicity for Susceptible I was very excited but there was also a slight feeling of trepidation, what if the long wait had built my expectations up too high?
I need not have worried; Susceptible is a beautiful book drawn from a childhood and adolescence filled with wonder and pain, and darkness and light. A coming of age story where the need to break free of one’s upbringing is imperative. As Castrée says at the end “I’m eighteen. I have all my teeth. I can do what ever I want”
The book begins with Castrée (or Goglu as her character is named in the book) as a naked baby on an almost empty page. The narration is in Castrée’s characteristic neat yet intricate cursive text and discusses the topic of nature versus nurture. As Goglu grows older a plant beside her grows too, and as she ponders her depressive nature the plant slowly begins to entrap her. She struggles and eventually breaks free, we see her curled up and clothed and the text says “I have pulled myself so far away from my family that it is almost like I don’t belong to it anymore”. These four pages lay out themes of the book common to other coming of age stories; the feeling of being trapped by family, attempting to find one’s sense of self, and the desire to fly the nest.
Susceptible details Goglu’s life until the age of 18, she lives with her mother Amère and her partner Amer. Everyone in the book is given a pseudonym and on initial reading I didn’t realise that these names translated as ‘bitter’ but that certainly describes these two. Amère was the youngest of 16 siblings and appears not to be able to handle being single. She is the opposite of Goglu who craves silence and solitude.
Goglu’s father Tête d’Oeuf (great name!) left when she was two years old to go live at the other end of Canada in British Columbia “a mythical kingdom where dads go to disappear”. There is a very atmospheric double page spread as Goglu watches him leave from a second floor window. Outside it is night and raining heavily, and the only illumination is from the headlight of Tête d’Oeuf’s motorbike. Castrée draws precipitation beautifully.
In the Comics Journal Harvey Pekar described Robert Crumb as having “a cartoony style, but his work, because of its wealth of accurately observed detail, is also realistic”, the same can be said about Castrée’s artwork. Clothes are meticulously striped or checked, furniture is painstakingly patterned and vehicles are realistically rendered.
When she is 15 Goglu visits her father for the first time in 10 years and she begins to experience the freedom and space that she has been craving “I discover true solitude and I savour it”. The book touches on her experiences with drugs, sex and music as she begins to find her way in the world and moves towards the inevitable break from her mother. Amère makes a last attempt to stop Goglu leaving by suggesting they get an apartment together and when Goglu refuses she tries to make her feel guilty “well… you’ve abandoned me…”. Goglu can take no more and floats out of her shoes and through a hole in the white space of the page.
In interviews Castrée has admitted to a problem that faces all autobiographical cartoonists, how do people feel about being depicted in the book? She confesses that the comic may upset her mother “I have this magical power to break my mom’s heart”. Despite this and perhaps because she has not spoken to her mother for several years, Castrée felt that this was a story she had to draw. I am very grateful that she did.
Works cited
Castrée, Geneviève Susceptible. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2013.
Elverum, Geneviève, Harkham, Sammy & Broersma, Matt Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Book 3: An Anthology of New Illustrated Fiction. Montreal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2005.
Hergé Tintin in Tibet. Tournai: Casterman, 1960.
Pekar, Harvey Blood and Thunder: Harvey Pekar and R. Fiore in The Comics Journal. Seattle: Fantagraphics [online] http://www.tcj.com/blood-and-thunder-harvey-pekar-and-r-fiore/ [Accessed 23rd April 2013].