In Walk Me to the Corner, Swedish painter and comic artist Anneli Furmark explores the transformative joy and heartbreaking consequences of unexpectedly falling in love in middle age.
"What would you choose? To be fine all the time... or fantastic sometimes and terribly sad sometimes?" Four friends, all women, discuss this during dinner. Elise, whose personal life has recently imploded, chooses "equilibrium. That's the good stuff. Especially when you don't have it." Writer Elise, age 56, and professor Henrik, parents of two grown sons, have been "maybe even uncommonly happy" for almost 30 years. And then Elise meets Dagmar at an event. Their three-second hug at evening's end demands more. Dagmar, too, is married to a wife she loves, with whom she shares two daughters. When "the inevitable" happens, both confess to their spouses, unsure of the outcome: "What am I supposed to do with this information? What happens now?" Henrik asks. For Elise, she doesn't love Henrik "any less than before," but she can't deny her feelings for Dagmar. Life goes on. Henrik--in a chapter called "The Inevitable (2)"--leaves. The heart wins, but at what cost?
Furmark's 10th graphic novel, deftly translated by Hanna Strömberg (who also translated Furmark's Red Winter), is her second to appear in English. Her candid reveal of an extramarital liaison unfolds in borderless panels--in shades of black and white, single-color washes or full-color vibrancy--as if to underscore the unpredictable clinging and cleaving of complicated alliances. Elise and Dagmar are the star-crossed lovers, but as Furmark astutely demonstrates through this aching, penetrating story, every decision reverberates far beyond their intense affair. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon