'Amalia': diary of an overwhelmed family mother

Do not be fooled by the friendly, almost childlike drawing, or by its humorous cartoons with pastel colors.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
15 February 2023 Wednesday 04:42
39 Reads
'Amalia': diary of an overwhelmed family mother

Do not be fooled by the friendly, almost childlike drawing, or by its humorous cartoons with pastel colors. Under a sweet wrapper, what Amalia (Garbuix Books) tells us is the story of a mother who tries to combine her personal life with her professional life in the best possible way. An impossible conciliation exercise, real as life itself, which the French Aude Picault portrays with humor, tenderness and authenticity.

Amalia is an effective and sensitive mother of a family. She would want to make everything perfect, from recycling the garbage to taking care of her four-year-old son. But she is overwhelmed. Her work is more and more demanding and the environment more dehumanized, her husband is worried about a crisis that threatens her work and on top of that she has to live with his teenage daughter, a slut hooked on her cell phone and the influencers. Family reconciliation is a chimera.

It is difficult to be a father or a mother and not feel identified with this living portrait of the contemporary world that Amalia proposes. A gentle but by no means softened portrait of the stress and self-demands of our time. A comic that in its almost 150 pages –which can be read in one go– deals with many other current issues, such as the handling of food by the agri-food industry, the professional burnout syndrome –work burnout– or the dependence on young people in social networks.

As we read these pages, we understand that Amalia's kind colors and humor are surely the best option for this book because Aude Picault prefers his message to reach us with a smile on his lips. Although, sometimes, that smile turns into a grimace when you understand that the author is talking about feelings that we know well because we have lived them very closely.

The book is a contemporary comedy that invites us to live life differently in order to enjoy it. A comic where the different plot lines of each of the protagonists intersect. Picault makes a great psychological portrait of the characters, with dialogues that ring true and that define well the way each one of them is. And in this cast of characters, of course, the one who gives the book its name stands out, Amalia. She is a kind woman suffocated by the pressure that surrounds her. A fighter about to collapse.

A tender and at the same time realistic account of current daily life presented with a graphic style that evokes both the plastic delicacy of Sempé and the forcefulness of the poignant Claire Bretécher –with an explicit tribute in this case– with whom the author surely shares her free and incorruptible feminist claim. A claim made from freedom and frankness.