Graphic Novel Review: Something, Not Nothing – A Story of Grief and Love
Author: Sarah Leavitt
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Publish Date: September 2024
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Catalog ID: ISBN: 978-1551529516
Where to buy: https://bookshop.org/lists/recently-reviewed-on-graphicmedicine-org
Author website: https://sarahleavitt.com/
Review
by Soph Myers-Kelley
Something Not Nothing is a gorgeously poetic work of art that focuses on the topic of losing one’s spouse to medically assisted death. Sarah Leavitt masterfully translates the untranslatable- losing your partner, who has suffered for decades with chronic pain. Leavitt expresses her conflict of wanting that pain to stop for her wife and knowing how much she’ll miss her when she’s gone, how a part of her will feel missing forever.
Leavitt uses poetic narration and complements it with watercolor paintings, ink drawings, as well as colored pencil art. The print book is larger (9” x 11”) than your typical graphic medicine novel, giving these artistic poems the room they deserve to breathe and be seen.
At age 54, Leavitt’s partner, Donimo, died in a natural setting beside a river with her loved ones attending. She and I have several disability identities in common (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, fibromyalgia) and some not in common (myalgic encephalomyelitis, permanent injuries from car accidents, etc.), making her chronic pain and fatigue more relatable to me.
The abstract art meant to depict contrary feelings, impressions, nature, and experiences, as well as her use of animals (particularly horses) shares her hopelessness, fear, morosity, hopefulness, joy, confusion, and longing. Her story is like so many people who’ve lost their beloved, and also completely unique and her own. If you’re looking for a meditation on love, loss, and sorrow, please spend a couple of hours’ company with this book.
Editor’s note: One of Leavitt’s earlier book, Tangles – A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me, was reviewed here.
______________________________________________
Soph Myers-Kelley is a medical librarian, herbalist, and activist living in North Carolina. They can be contacted at https://www.smyerskelley.com/ and followed at https://www.instagram.com/thesofakingofficial/
Originally posted on graphicmedicine.org here: https://www.graphicmedicine.org/comic-reviews/something-not-nothing-a-story-of-grief-and-love-2/