Unfortunately, I found the final chapter of this beautiful story quite disappointing.
The surreal and self-mocking humor of the first four chapters, which was perhaps the saga's strongest point, had already begun to fade in the fifth volume and is here completely replaced by an extremely bitter and often cruel sarcasm.
The temporal narrative, which covered 18 years in the first five volumes, spans another 18 in the last one, leaving the reader with an impression of haste and superficiality in the events narrated. Too many aspects are introduced and then completely abandoned, among them Riad's relationship with his first girlfriend Céline, who literally disappears from the story the panel after sleeping with the protagonist.
The attention given to the protagonist's psychoanalytic therapy is in some ways interesting - and has been praised by many critics - but it seems to take up too much space in the story, leading Sattouf to neglect many topics potentially important to understand the author's ethical and sentimental evolution, such as his relationship with his brother Yahda who lives with him and his mother in Rennes and is barely mentioned in the 176 pages of the final volume.
Finally, I found the description of Riad's mother the most problematic point of the book. What was in previous chapters a naive but affectionate person, in this last volume transforms into a real human catastrophe: depressed, credulous to the point of stupidity, obsessively (if understandably) focused on the idea of recovering her abducted son Fadi to the point of completely neglecting Riad's needs and ambitions. In short, the character is depicted as a true caricature that finds no redemption even in the story's sort-of-happy ending.
Riad Sattouf has dedicated the entire final chapter of this saga - and perhaps the entire story he narrated from beginning to end - to the account of the effort and journey made to free himself from the oppressive and castrating figure of his father; perhaps it is time for him to begin a different therapy, or perhaps a new work of art, to reconcile and forgive his mother's troubled personality and difficult existence.