Cartoonist Lucy Knisley got an opportunity that most only dream of: a travel-expenses-paid trip to Europe and Scandinavia, thanks to a book tour. An Age of License is Knisley's comics travel memoir recounting her adventures. It's punctuated by whimsical visual devices; peppered with the cats she meets along the way; and, of course, features her hallmark -- drawings and descriptions of food that will make your mouth water. But it's not all kittens and raclette crêpes: Knisley's experiences are colored by anxieties, introspective self-inquiries, and quotidian revelations -- about traveling alone in unfamiliar countries, and about her life and career.
I want to give this a million stars. Sometimes you read a book at the right time and it's exactly what you need. Lucy Knisley is a wonderful person who draws beautiful pictures and writes so genuinely and honestly about the strange, complicated things you deal with in your 20s. I relate to so much of this. It's a travelogue, so more or less a diary of the time she spent on a trip to Europe she took in 2011. Diaries don't have clear cut endings/resolutions, but I didn't want or expect that from this. This is a book about a journey, and it made me feel so much less alone.
