So I walk into the library to pick up this reserved book. The librarian keeps insisting it must be a travel guide. Wrong. It's a graphic novel. About a graphic novelist, actually.
Simon's creative well has run dry. His work feels hollow. His life feels hollower. Nothing sticks. Nothing moves him. He drifts through decisions rather than making them. But he says yes to one thing: a comics festival invitation in Portugal.
That's when something shifts. The Portuguese language hits his ears like a frequency from childhood—summers at his grandmother's house, memories he'd let slip away. Questions start surfacing. Why did Portugal become foreign territory to him? Why doesn't he know his grandparents' story? Why the distance from his father?
A cousin's wedding pulls him deeper into the family timeline, connecting dots he'd never bothered to notice.
The narrative unfolds in three movements: Simon, Jean, Abel. Each section grows more saturated with color as Simon reconnects with life itself, tracing backward from father to grandfather. Not much "happens" in conventional terms. This is life in its raw form—conversations, moments, encounters, questions without neat answers.
But these moments make Simon real. You watch him become someone you care about. The artwork does half the heavy lifting here. Pedrosa's visual language is warm, alive, rhythmic. He draws a world that pulses with color and sound. Sound especially—it's rendered brilliantly, given weight and texture on the page.
What struck me most: how visceral the sound design feels in a medium without actual sound. That's craft.
"Am I the country where I was born... or am I myself, regardless of any country?"
The whole thing is a philosophical inquiry disguised as a personal journey. Identity. Belonging. Roots versus self-definition. Heavy questions handled with a light touch.
A beautiful exploration of who we are when we don't know where we're from.
Aire Libre, 2011. - 262 pages