Daytripper

by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon

[nannah]

I feel so bad for finding this just "meh ...", because I can just feel that there was so much love put into this (and it also says the authors poured their souls into the graphic novel in the introduction ...). But that love never really reached me, I guess, and I couldn't connect to the characters or the story.

Content warnings:
suicide
lots of death - it will make you think of your own death, so be warned!

Representation:
main character is an Afro (right?)-Brazilian
his best friend is black (Afro-Brazilian?)
the book takes place in Brazil, so there are many ethnicities

Brás de Oliva Domingos is the son of a famous writer, and dreams of becoming one himself while he writes obituaries for a newspaper.

That's basically the basic storyline, and then the graphic novel riffs of that, asking the question: what are the most important moments of your life? Each chapter is an "alternative life" for Brás (with an alternative death, too, and an obituary to top it off). They're also rather slow moving, with an in-the-moment feel (except for a couple, oof), that lets you explore that question for yourself: what moments ARE important in life? What do I want out of it?

But there was just something about the writing (LOTS of macho "living the life! Lots of chicks, yeah!" dialogue maybe) ... that I just didn't get. And that's okay; just means it's not for me.

I did have a problem, however, with the fact that Jorge, Brás's best friend, a dark-skinned black man, was the only character close to Brás who turned violent and killed him. Disappointing. Frankly, both the darker-skinned characters Brás knew and loved turned out to be either overly emotional, violent, or unstable. Not a very good choice .

Anyway, it's obvious many people connected to this story, so it's also obvious it was a just "not for me" book.