It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth: This Book Is for Someone, Somewhere.

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So characters' faces will be replaced with blank masks when they emotionally shut down, or at other times they might become animals, Maus-style (and turns out it's really disconcerting to see this happen with someone you actually know). Drawing weird faces over people (Similar to Pun Pun Manga) and also having the narrative go all over the place, making it really feel like you're inside her mind just like your inside your own with various thoughts. She begins to realize her earlier work The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott is very much about creating a narrative of who she is becoming who she wants to be, while this book about writing this very book is more a look at who she is afraid she is becoming.

The story follows Zoe writing this book about writing herself for a period of six months, though it sways through the timeline of her entire life as well as into more abstract realms of her creative mind.

Because the narrative is so very focused on the author and her often suicidal thoughts, the ending could only ever go in one of two ways, fortunately it ends with the author trying to dig herself out of the self-regarding hole she's dug herself into rather than the more permanent and tragic one. but well if i get to the personal stuff- i don't think there was ever a right time for me to read this book. This is a highly self-conscious book, capturing the very human inner contradictions and inner dialogues we all face, particularly during moments of self-doubt.

This combines with the hubbub of internal voices through which she constantly second-guesses herself, a technique which reminded me more than anything of the bickering personality elements in – a comparison I doubt Thorogood will welcome, though I still think it's a masterpiece of comics craft if not politics - Dave Sim's Guys. No, that sounds trite but the idea of letters colliding into a statement that will give a feeling is pretty cool at least, right? She grows and gains perspective throughout the book, but her experience through the doldrums is always center stage. I felt no empathy reading it - rather, I wanted her to take control those times she realised she was enjoying her misery. Her philosophy, her illustrations, and her worldview are IMO worth taking a look at if you can handle the subject material.it was relatable to the point that it was painful and all consuming and in all honesty i wanted to dnf at multiple points. At times she doubts her own anxiety, characterising it as a performance and equating it with self-indulgence. Some parts had depth but it felt like much of it was very surface level, which is understandable considering the subject and the freshness of it. It jumped back and forth between the 6 month period and other parts of her life yet mostly lacked a personal level. It's a good place to get to, but it does illustrate the overall slightness of the narrative, in that whilst the artistic endeavour of the book (hopefully) acted as a literal self-help guide for the author, as readers the less self-absorbed, more engaged-with-other-peoples'-realities person she trails at the end of the book is the author who might, in the end, give us more gifts.

Some people are simply unable to experience positive emotion around personal accomplishments and creations. IT’S LONELY AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH is an intimate and metanarrative look into the life of a selfish artist who must create for her own survival. He is also a co-organiser of the annual UK Small Press Day and has been a judge or committee member for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition, the British Comic Awards and the SICBA Awards.I’m glad other reviews seem to have seen something in it that I didn’t and people seem to have benefited from the book.