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

Product Information

Thorogood taps into sensation and the way that it is experienced in a way that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s astonishing.”— AIPT (review link)

From rising comics talent Zoe Thorogood ( The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott, Rain) comes her deeply personal and impossibly creative autobiographical graphic novel creation in It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth. Running the gamut of human emotion with her narrative and reflecting upon Thorogood’s life via hyper-imaginative visuals, Center of the Earth feels like something we shouldn’t be allowed to read – but will come away thankful that we can. Maybe I’d be dead if not for this. But instead I’m going to make something that didn’t exist before. And I think that’s beautiful.’ Thorogood taps into sensation and the way that it is experienced in a way that is unlike anything I've seen before. It's astonishing. - AIPT (review link)I think Zoe's clever use of her wild art works in her favor. 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. The art is the strongest part of the story, helping convey her very real and very scary thoughts of killing herself. The self-deprecating, faux-narcissistic, depressive, dark humour is just too – sorry Zoe, I’m going to say it – relatable. I’d recommend this book for anyone that has a loved on that suffers from depression. But be warned, this is not the sanitized version of depression that you usually get—enough so that you understand, but not enough so that you are freaked out. This gets at how truly horrendous it is to have to live with, negotiate with, be entangled with overwhelming depression. I've read a lot of comics (and other) memoirs lately about depression, but none quite as lively and inventive as this. Faced with the knowledge that there are many such stories out there--I just read Debbie Tung's comic memoir about her depression recently)--and feeling self-conscious about her adding yet another one to the pile, she nevertheless sallies forth. But over the course of some 3200 days Thorogood faces her depression, including some suicidal ideation, exacerbated by the isolation of the pandemic, and shares with us the meta-narrative of her stylistic choices. Moreover, the specificity with which Thorogood crafts It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth renders it a humane work. She does not claim her experience as universal, and her awareness of her perspective’s edges allows the comic to thrive on the specifics of her life, rather than try for grand sweeping generalizations of the sort that can easily become banana peels leading to open manholes. And in that specificity, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth offers its audience space for recognition. To use myself as an example, while Thor

Zeo Thorogood documents six months of her life. The result is a meditation on depression and how it informs and deforms every aspect of your life. I know this published a while ago, but I saw it here and based on this cover, I just really wanted to read it. Ironically, I had no idea what it was about. It sat in my shelf for a little bit though because I didn't have a deadline with this one.I gave up on wishing my various projects and accomplishments would make me "feel better". I stopped obsessing over what was wrong with me. I know what's wrong with me. Adverse child experiences around the self and creation socialized me in a way that will likely last for the rest of my life. I love how Zoe experiments with different styles throughout the book. The story flows seamlessly, despite the staccato changes in colour, layout, form, etc. It’s a great representation of the bumpy spiral-turned-whirlwind of mental illness. While Billie Scott – about a young artist who discovers she is going blind just as she starts to gain some success – brought Thorogood a lot of attention, it was It’s Lonely that cemented her growing reputation among readers and the comics industry.

Plot wise, don't expect much progression. It's not that kind of book. The same can be said about intrigue, mystery, and tension. Those aren't the point this time around. Instead, this is a high-resolution snapshot of our protagonist's mental state. She grows and gains perspective throughout the book, but her experience through the doldrums is always center stage. First, thank you to the author, image comics and netgalley for allowing me to read an ebook for this masterpiece.

Collected Editions

It's Lonely at the Center of the Earth is a deep dive into the psyche of comic artist Zoe Thorogood, and it is a beautiful, mesmerizing journey. Highly recommended. And yeah I guess you should read the trigger warnings if thoughts of suicide, talks about depression, sex, or anything else human bother you. Then she just tweeted in response to the news: “Uhh”, followed by, “I’m not expecting to win any of these bastards, but just to be nominated means the world.”

Edit: unfair 5 AM review. Feel compelled to speak my mind. Some people are simply unable to experience positive emotion around personal accomplishments and creations. I am one of them. The most helpful thing for me was reading Changing Our Minds, a lesbian feminist book critical of psychiatry and therapy. In it, one of the points is that it doesn't really matter how you feel, it matters what you do. I don't want to kill myself because he left me. I want to kill myself because I understand why he did. I can't help but thank Zoe for creating this work of perfection. There are reasons as to why people with mental health issues do not come forward. And the 1 star rate review is a good example to why. Thorogood taps into sensation and the way that it is experienced in a way that is unlike anything I've seen before. It's astonishing." - AIPT (review link)

Creators

It's sad that in 21. century we are afraid to talk about mental issues as most of those talks end up on some shitty phrase of „support“ such as „think positive“, „you can do it“, „there is nothing wrong with you“. Yet, some people decide to let it all out, a burst of creative energy that gives us a remarkable piece of art with artists pieces of themselves embedded into it. This isn’t the kind of A-to-B, linear, formulaic mental illness story where the protagonist goes from sad to happy, running off into the sunset with a grateful wave to their trauma for all the “good lessons”. Thorogood is one of the very few comic creators I’ve encountered to successfully capture not only the experience of listening to music but the sensation that a song can have when it resonates with you for ill and good—as happens with her and Cake’s “ Open Book” in It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth from Image Comics.