Tony Gould

Fits and starts

A book with a title like Epileptic does not raise high expectations: will it be an account of suffering nobly borne, or a worthy medical treatise perhaps? Not a bit of it, this memoir is a graphics extravaganza spread over 361 pages, bursting with energy and wild imaginings, a comic tour de force that is as emotionally gut-wrenching as it is visually stunning. For those who associate the word ‘comic’ with Dan Dare and the Eagle, or the firm of D. C. Thomson, this book will be a revelation, an eloquent (probably more so in the original French than in this American English translation), moving and relentlessly honest dissection of a family gradually overwhelmed by the eldest child’s epilepsy.

The author/artist, David B. (born Pierre-Fran

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