I first heard of Displacement (2015) by Lucy Knisley from another Cannonball review. Knisley is a twenty-something writer who volunteers to chaperone her aging grandparents when they unexpectedly sign up for a cruise. I’d never read a graphic novel [or travelogue] before, but this one called to me for a number of reasons. First, the review was very positive and persuasive. Second, I have never been on a cruise, and I’m pretty sure that’s been a good decision. Right now, most of my knowledge of cruises […]
“We evolved to respond with automatic care to the young, while old age repels, makes us afraid of our own mortality.”
Well clearly I need to read the rest of Lucy Knisley’s work. I loved Relish: My Life in the Kitchen so when narfna reviewed Displacement in February, I immediately put it on my 2016 TBR. Displacement was even better than Relish. Relish was enjoyable, it’s just that Displacement spoke to my personal life and resonated in a deeper way. Knisley’s elderly grandparents, Allen and Phyllis, signed up for a cruise to the Caribbean. Unfortunately they’re in their 90s, have low mobility, know no one else […]
Her best travelogue yet.
This light but still quietly devastating little travelogue might be the best thing Lucy Knisley has ever written. (Drawn? Created? Mixed media confuses word choice.) Her first two travelogues (French Milk and An Age of License) were explorations of her own maturation as she saw different parts of the world, but this one is on a whole other level. Her grandparents Allen and Phyllis are 93 and 90 years old respectively, and have signed up to go on a Caribbean cruise with a group from […]
Someone pay me to travel around Europe eating tasty food and kissing cute boys.
Lucy Knisley is a delightful, talented human being, and I will read every book she chooses to publish. This particular book is a record of her travels to Europe over the summer of 2011. She was invited to speak at a Norwegian comics convention in Bergen, and used the opportunity to travel to Sweden to visit a man she’d met several weeks before when he was vacationing in New York City. She also travels to France (Paris, and another city of which I’ve since forgotten […]
A travelogue to Paris in comic form.
I’ve been a fan of Lucy Knisley’s since probably around 2007, actually, which is when she published this travelogue of her time in Paris with her mother, when both of them were celebrating special birthdays. Lucy was turning twenty-two, just on the verge of graduating from college, and her mother was turning fifty. They spent five weeks living in a tiny Parisian apartment, going to see museums, and eating mounds and mounds of French food. Honestly, I don’t even remember where or how I found […]
Coming of Age: Finding Direction in Lucy Knisley’s “An Age of License”
After an invitation to speak at Raptus Comic Fest in Bergen, Norway, Knisley takes the opportunity to plan a trip around Europe to visit friends and family. Over the course of her travels she struggles with past relationships, work, and an uncertain future. She spends pages analyzing her love life, both with her ex John, and her current beau Henrik. What makes this difficult for her is that she still has feelings for John that she can’t seem to move past, and yet she knows […]