Agnes Lee’s debut graphic novel, 49 Days, opens with a collection of brief vignettes a few younger girl attempting to make a journey however being foiled—generally in dramatic and horrifying trend—by the forces of nature. Every day, she should begin her journey solely to fail once more.
These opening sections are deliberately disorienting for the reader, as they’re for the younger protagonist, Kit—who, readers quickly uncover, is definitely making her manner via what’s identified in Buddhist custom because the bardo, a 49-day area between loss of life and rebirth.
Kit has died in an accident, and over the course of the novel, Kit’s makes an attempt to succeed in the afterlife are interspersed with two different narratives: first, Kit’s reminiscences of rising up in a loving household and falling in love; and second, glimpses of how Kit’s two siblings, mom and different family members are coping within the wake of her loss of life.
For Kit’s Korean American household, many reminiscences and necessary moments focus on meals, prayer and ritual. Lee, who illustrates the New York Times’ “Metropolitan Diary” column, excels at capturing small moments of household life—studying a brand new phrase, sharing a meal collectively, begging to maintain a stray cat—and at conveying intense grief—discovering new ache in outdated joys, falling aside on the sight of that beloved cat ready by the door of an empty room.
Lee cleverly makes use of three completely different colours, along with black and white, to point these three completely different narrative strands: Kit’s metaphysical journey is a comfortable blue, whereas her reminiscences are a muted orange and the actions of her residing household are a delicate pink. This is an uncommon, profoundly shifting graphic novel whose class belies its complexity and whose emotional affect solely grows upon rereading.
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