There are books whose cover stands out from the rest, thus announcing their purpose of being unique. Some stay with just that, a purpose. This is not the case with Alison (Errata Naturae), written and drawn by Lizzy Stewart, an intelligent, emotional and delicate comic book. A delicious, subtle and deep read at the same time. Alison is a little gem that should not go unnoticed. Small because of its dimensions and because of its 170 pages, but reading it captures us first and then leaves us with the pleasant feeling of having been very close to both the protagonist and the very particular friends that surround her.
The book tells us the life of Alison Porter, a “village girl” born in the county of Dorset, in the south of England, in 1958. In that environment, the future expectations for the young woman are reduced to repeating the type of life that his mother and her mother lived. Being a good wife and having zero prospects of being anything on her own.
When she gets married she does so to follow what is expected of her, Alison is very young and comes to marriage with more naivety than passion. Her life will change when she meets Patrick Kerr, a painter who is making a name for himself in the art world. He is a man 30 years older than her, cultured, with many friends, born into a rich family and whose only goal in life is to succeed as an artist.
It is then when the book reaches its true dimension and all its interest. Patrick's appearance turns the young woman's life upside down. Alison decides to break away from a boring and predictable life and begins to discover herself and the artist in her. The relationship between Alison and Patrick becomes that of teacher and student, that of an experienced tutor with a young artist. Art and love mix. This graphic novel uses a false autobiography format, in which the protagonist, now very old, evokes her life with the distance that the passing of the years gives her. She narrates her childhood, her story of love and lack of love, and also the difficulty of being a woman, being able to live her life, emancipate herself and break with the limits of patriarchy.
Lizzy Stewart wonderfully portrays the feelings of young Alison as well as the ambivalence with which Patrick moves towards this girl who has left everything to go with him. Patrick is a narcissist but at the same time he is the one who has allowed Alison to aspire to another type of life and open her mind. The book portrays very well the contradictory feeling that Alison will always harbor towards her mentor.
As a backdrop, these pages also allow us to delve into the environment of artists and art dealers in the late 1970s, with their closed circles of friends and their fierce competition. Stewart tells it all taking advantage of the formal freedom of the graphic novel, alternating sequences with schematic drawings made in watercolor and long passages of text. He also relies on the insertion of sketches and written notes that are combined with the vignettes forming a kind of scrapbook.
The combination of conventional vignettes with text passages inevitably recalls the page format of the works of the always sharp Posy Simmonds, who, precisely, defines this work as “an unforgettable, complex and intimate book.” We have no choice but to subscribe to the words of the author of the celebrated Gemma Bovery.
Alison was considered the graphic novel of the year by The Guardian and The Telegraph, while The Irish Times considered it, quite simply, the best book of the year.
