Book: Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story

This book was beautiful.

I've been looking for a good opportunity to foray into the graphic novel genre. I didn't want to choose something "just because" it had pictures. And in the past, graphic novels haven't really done it for me. They should. Know me, and you'd know they should. But they just haven't.

Maybe it's because, and I'm just pontificating here, the story lines are somewhat unemotional. Correct me if I'm wrong, but tons of these (let's abbreviate here) G.N.'s are written by men, with these hard-to-grasp, somewhat unemotional concepts. They're more like adventures. Or something. It's like, it takes so long to get to the meat of the story, and there's always so much in-between stuff happening. And it makes it hard for me to concentrate. And sometimes, I'm not sure what I should be concentrating on. The story? The pictures? It's not the type of book I really know how to read. Because the thing is, I really like words, and I really like pictures. Separately. But together? It's like listening to an amazing singer singing with an amazing guitarist, at the same time, each at the same volume. It's hard to know what to focus on. Well, anyway. That's been my experience. Mostly, I haven't liked the stories.

But I was in the neighborhood bookstore, waiting for something to grab me. This book was misplaced, left out on a shelf, not quite fitting in with anything else. It should have been with the Valentine's Day book display up front, but I guess people don't really consider AIDS stories a romantic gesture.

But really, this is a love story. A total package love story. It's about a young man, who meets a young woman, and they're both pretty awesome people. And she has a kid. And she is divorced. And she is HIV positive. And so is her little boy.

So, what's a man to do?

This is their love story (and a true story!) and it's just beautiful, and mesmerizing, and sensitive, and vulnerable. Yes, the story is vulnerable. Always on the verge of falling into tears, or self-defeating, or missing out on it's own chance for happiness.

But it doesn't. And that's not giving anything away. The book is called A Positive Love Story, which of course, is really what caught my eye. How can something so sad be so utterly uplifting?

Also, I found it warmly inspiring, artistically.



[The author is Frederik Peeters, and is considered one of Europe's up and coming illustrators. Blue Pills was previously published in Europe, where it won the Premios La Carcel de Papel in Spain and the Polish Jury Prize at Angouleme. It has sold over 20,000 copies in its original French edition, and now Houghton Mifflin is publishing it in the United States. -- source]