Book: Notes from a Sickbed - by Tessa Brunton

Sly Saint · Sep 8, 2022

About the Author
Tessa Brunton is an cartoonist and author based in Santa Cruz, California. Her first comic book Passage was nominated for two Ignatz Awards: Outstanding Comic and Promising New Talent. Her mini-comic Second Banana is a Best American Comics 2014 notable comic. Her comics have appeared in Bitch Magazine, Maisonneuve Magazine, The Comics Journal, and many anthologies.

In 2009, Tessa Brunton experienced the first symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome). She spent much of the next eight years unwell, in a medical holding pattern, housebound and often alone. In 2017, she found a strategy that helped reduce her symptoms, and soon began creating the first installments of a graphic memoir. Notes from a Sickbed collects previously released and brand-new, unseen comics that recall her experiences with honesty, a pointed wit, and a lively visual imagination.
Click to expand...

Review
In imaginative, often funny autobiographical vignettes, a comics creator depicts life with myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome.
Years before she's diagnosed with ME, Brunton is forced to take to her couch, miserable and in pain. The vignettes take place over several years, as readers see Brunton, who reads White, go through multiple hair colors and styles. Some episodes are fully realistic depictions of a creative young woman learning to live with a life-altering illness, and others are fantastic visions of her imagined worlds. Lovingly detailed, black-and-white cartoons of idealized mobile beds and homes include a snail shell, a giant cake, and a multipage spread of a tower home with a bed flume, talking goats, and a room dedicated to Halloween costumes. Brunton rarely offers medicalizing details about the symptoms she experiences, with only brief mentions of headaches, fevers, and brain fog. Instead, she focuses on some of the infuriating aspects of ME, including its unpredictability, post-exertional malaise, and the exhausting grind of despair and grief. She falls for a few wellness scams and is gaslit by labor-intensive diets that can't possibly be implemented by anyone who needs their claimed benefits. The final comic ends with Brunton, in bed long enough for her hair to grow, pondering the fantasy and science-fiction comics she wants the energy to write. This honest work depicts a bleak but not comfortless world familiar to many readers with chronic illness and disability.
Painfully real.
Click to expand...

Shadrach Loom · Sep 8, 2022

a snail shell, a giant cake, and a multipage spread of a tower home with a bed flume, talking goats, and a room dedicated to Halloween costumes . . . a bleak but not comfortless world familiar to many readers with chronic illness and disability
Click to expand...

Yes, we’ve all been there.

Trish · Sep 8, 2022

The Kindle and paperback editions are around £13 in the UK and it's not available until November. Looks like something I will enjoy.

Sly Saint · Nov 11, 2022

Notes from a Sickbed: An Interview with Author Tessa Brunton

https://lernerbooks.blog/2022/11/notes-from-a-sickbed-an-interview-with-author-tessa-brunton.html

Tom Kindlon · Dec 8, 2022

https://twitter.com/user/status/1600975073560899584

Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

Book: Notes from a Sickbed - by Tessa Brunton

Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Shadrach Loom Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Trish Moderator Staff Member

Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Tom Kindlon Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Book: Notes from a Sickbed - by Tessa Brunton

Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Shadrach Loom Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Trish Moderator Staff Member

Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Tom Kindlon Senior Member (Voting Rights)

Share This Page

Useful Searches