Lizzy Stewart (2022) Alison.

Alison is quite beautiful. I bought this graphic novel for a quid. I’d like to say its smudged cover art stood out. But I know less about art than music. There are, of course, different kinds of art and music. In terms of making a living from art, 99% have no chance, Graphic novelists and poets have less of a chance that that.

Alison, the narrator, whose life we follow from pane to pain in 1958, in Bridgeport, Dorset. There she is as a baby with her mum and dad. ‘We were certainly ordinary’, she tells us. ‘I think we were happy...Whether we felt it or not.’

That reminds me of that old saying we used to get. ‘Yer gonnae enjoy this whether you like it or no.’ There might be a price attached. ‘That cost a lot aw money!’

Alison is true to life.

She’s seventeen when she meets Andrew in the swing park. He’s twenty.  She’s in love with the idea of being in love. They get married when she’s eighteen.

He’s a good sort. His parents dote on him. She’s set for life in a windblown house 15 miles from town. A trip to the cinema (£2.50 each) is the kind of treat they hanker after.

Volte.

An older man, 38. Patrick Kelly chats her up in the library. He’s upper-crust. Sure of himself in that aristocratic way. Invites her to attend a drawing class, invites her to sit for him. She can keep her clothes on, but she doesn’t.

He invites her to London. She has talent. He reassures her.

Crossroads.

Stay with her childhood sweetheart and remain a child or…

The readers knows the choice she’ll make. The invocation of London the seventies and eighties is wonderful. Ban the Bomb marches. AIDS. They’re all here.

Kelly of course moves on.

Alison could never hope to have his arthouse connections or success but really this is a book about finding yourself. She inhabits the life she should live. That’s all most of us can hope for. Read on.