Catherine Meurisse is a master at combining two opposing things into something beautiful and harmonious: she tells the story of her grief, loss and trauma in a humorous way, leaving out no punches and making you want to laugh and cry (and wonder if it's even okay to find something as horrifying as her trying to escape police protection to buy baked goods as funny as she makes it out to be). Furthermore, as can be seen by the cover of the book, she utilizes the full scope of the canvas to tell her story, and immerses her comic-self into landscape paintings that suck the reader right in - something I had not previously seen in comics or graphic novels before. Given the role that nature and art play both in her life (as can be seen by her other memoir The Great Outdoors - which I *highly* recommend reading this summer!) and her healing process, it's no wonder that she captures that importance so well.

Despite the heavy subject matter, I wouldn't consider this book to be a "downer", for it captures all stages in the process of grief and ends on a high note. Can you believe it's been 6 years since the Charlie Hebdo shooting? I can't.