Zoe Thorogood decides to chronicle her life for six months starting in July 2021. During that time, she goes to Thought Bubble (a comics convention in North England); she goes on a transatlantic booty call to boff a sad American cartoonist; she sees a dog being abused in the park; and there are flashbacks a-plenty to her very recent childhood (she was 23 when creating this book) where she was depressed and creative. It’s… meh… at the centre of Zoe Thorogood’s world.
I tried reading this one last year when it was published in November but got really tired of it right off the bat: ANOTHER female cartoonist writing about herself? Ugh. No thanks (at least it wasn’t also about a fucking cat - there are cat-headed people in this one though). But she got a lot of nominations at the Eisners this year so I decided to give this (premature) memoir another shot and it turned out to be not so bad after all.
Am I being unreasonable - is it too much to ask that someone actually live a life before penning their memoirs? She was 23 when she started this - she’d just finished university, then COVID, then it’s memoir time? For what?! And it shows: there’s not much to this book as a lot of it is very mundane.
She’s been suicidally depressed since she was 14, has random suicidal ideation, has low self-esteem, and I guess putting that out there is meant to help people who also have the same problems by making them feel less alone? Fair enough. It does feel like a half-assed misery memoir though - she’s not very revealing and talks vaguely about familial troubles and her illness so, unless simply knowing you’re not the only one who’s also thought about offing themselves, I wonder how helpful something like this is.
I loved Thorogood’s imaginative visual style. She’s clearly a skilled artist and I like how she varies the art throughout the book and plays around with the structure and possibilities of comics as well. It’s funny how she draws herself as this androgynous bald cartoon face and the goofy Batman-ish figure representing her depression is a striking visual.
Your mileage may vary on the anecdotes mixed in here but I liked the Thought Bubble episode best and I didn’t mind reading about her mental health issues until they became repetitive - there’s only so many scenes you can read where the person has negative thoughts and gets overwhelmed easily. I’m glad that she mentions towards the end that being happy all the time isn’t realistic and that it’s a transient feeling for most people - I was wary about her being one of these lunatics who think becoming constantly happy is an achievable goal.
Quite a few of the anecdotes are unremarkable though - a lot of the school stuff was blah and the American artist thing felt like self-flagellation more than anything. The Angel/kid on the road anecdote felt made up too - she was listening to Queen on her headphones AND heard a scream in the distance? It must’ve been during one of Freddie’s quiet songs like Love of My Life.
Does the self-awareness that you’re being narcissistic and have a “love to be sad” complex make it better to read? Yes and no. I like Thorogood’s self-deprecating personality which comes through strongly, as well as her intelligence and artistry. And I don’t agree with her that it’s selfish to make comics about yourself. In the same breath though, I don’t want her to become just another dull female cartoonist who makes comics about their lives/relationships/cats - she’s clearly got the chops to go the distance with her imagination so I’d rather read a comic where she’s stretching herself creatively rather than stroking herself off.
Unless you lead a dramatic life or have amazingly profound thoughts all the time, making a book about a random six months of your life is never going to be that compelling. And that’s pretty much what you get here: a muddle of stuff that’s sorta interesting and some that’s not, hence having to frequently reach back into the past to pad the book out. I was gonna make a pun on her name and say the book was thoro-ly ok but there wasn’t anything thorough about it - the book felt shallow for the most part. But I also think she’s got the skills and understanding of the comics medium to one day produce a book that lives up to her surname.
The art is the main star but the writing is pretty good too. Unevenly entertaining, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth is a portrait of the young artist as a meandering navel-gazer.
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