Nicolas

by Pascal Girard

Published 1 February 2009
"Nicolas" is a moving debut work by Quebecois cartoonist Pascal Girard. The book is presented as a series of short autobiographical vignettes that take place after the childhood death of his younger brother, Nicolas, who passed away in 1990. Each episode taken from Girard's childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood offers a glimpse into his multifaceted and ongoing process of reckoning, as he struggles to reconcile the magnitude of this tragedy with the minutiae of his daily experience of loss. "Nicolas" unfolds as a delicate portrait of the many faces of mourning, identified with surprising humor and pathos by an artist who knows them intimately.