What do you think?
Rate this book
Eustace
Poor Eustace is not very well. Convalescing in bed, his world is confined to the four walls of his grand and gloomy room. His days are spent in wild imaginings, punctuated by the occasional visit from his mother and a legion of Aunties, who fuss and smother Eustace.
But then his wicked uncle arrives in a cloud of pipe smoke, accompanied by a swelling cast of prostitutes, hoodlums, drunkards and assorted hangers-on. Suddenly Eustace finds himself transformed from invalid to the star of a glittering and decadent social scene, serving drinks and holding court from his enormous bed. That is, until his Uncle's past begins to catch up with him...
Eustace is blackly comic, surreal and exquisitely rendered. It marks the debut of a brilliant new graphic novelist.
But then his wicked uncle arrives in a cloud of pipe smoke, accompanied by a swelling cast of prostitutes, hoodlums, drunkards and assorted hangers-on. Suddenly Eustace finds himself transformed from invalid to the star of a glittering and decadent social scene, serving drinks and holding court from his enormous bed. That is, until his Uncle's past begins to catch up with him...
Eustace is blackly comic, surreal and exquisitely rendered. It marks the debut of a brilliant new graphic novelist.
280 pages, Hardcover
First published March 7, 2013
9 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
S.J. Harris
1 book2 followersS. J. Harris is a cartoonist and writer, and the author of the long-running web comics Paper Cuts and Eustace, both published on H2G2 under the pseudonym spimcoot. Eustace is his first full-length graphic novel.
See also under Steven Harris
See also under Steven Harris
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
January 10, 2021
The first half of this book is a delight, a strange and woozy portrait of a sickly child with hints at dark and unpleasant things going on just below the surface. The art is restrained but grotesque, a balance that’s really nicely done, with a particularly strong use of space
And then half way through it descends into nonsense: the idea behind the unpleasant uncle and his hangers on is a strong one but Harris seems to go straight for a combination of cheap shock and lazy surrealism. That this half of the book is by the same person who only a few pages previously had managed to do a haunting dream sequence in a war torn landscape is extraordinary. It’s still well drawn - and Harris has an excellent ear for dialogue - but it’s just lazy, lazy material as if Harris got someone else to finish the book off. Sadly it tarnishes the whole book and makes me think it’s just a colossal mess with some initial promise
Annoying
And then half way through it descends into nonsense: the idea behind the unpleasant uncle and his hangers on is a strong one but Harris seems to go straight for a combination of cheap shock and lazy surrealism. That this half of the book is by the same person who only a few pages previously had managed to do a haunting dream sequence in a war torn landscape is extraordinary. It’s still well drawn - and Harris has an excellent ear for dialogue - but it’s just lazy, lazy material as if Harris got someone else to finish the book off. Sadly it tarnishes the whole book and makes me think it’s just a colossal mess with some initial promise
Annoying
October 17, 2013
A beautifully ugly novel. Eustace is a sickly 8 year old, plagued by elderly relatives cooing and mooning over his convalescence as he laments his poor digestion with alternately cheery and gloomy asides to the reader.
The tone is handled masterfully. The breezy monologues, dialogues, pin-sharp speech patterns, and free-wheeling scenes gradually take the strain of a growing sense of dread as some relatives prove relatively... morally flexible. But throughout, the pencilled artistry and subtle lettering (coupled with the generally high vantage point of the eye) give the story a dreamlike sense of flotation which sees you through the nastiness beneath as it gradually rises to the surface. What's remarkable in all this is that the story stays almost entirely within Eustace's room.
Good use of panelling also, although it's sometimes a little too constrained by the regular beats of a basic 3x3 frame, and breaks out into free-form movements across and down the page.
I'd also have preferred to see bit more of the plots of individual characters worked through: the central focus is on Eustace, and a few others, but this makes the huge supporting cast rather poorly treated. It's as if Eustace doesn't really know or care what is going on outside his room, but then again perhaps that's the point.
More of this, please!
The tone is handled masterfully. The breezy monologues, dialogues, pin-sharp speech patterns, and free-wheeling scenes gradually take the strain of a growing sense of dread as some relatives prove relatively... morally flexible. But throughout, the pencilled artistry and subtle lettering (coupled with the generally high vantage point of the eye) give the story a dreamlike sense of flotation which sees you through the nastiness beneath as it gradually rises to the surface. What's remarkable in all this is that the story stays almost entirely within Eustace's room.
Good use of panelling also, although it's sometimes a little too constrained by the regular beats of a basic 3x3 frame, and breaks out into free-form movements across and down the page.
I'd also have preferred to see bit more of the plots of individual characters worked through: the central focus is on Eustace, and a few others, but this makes the huge supporting cast rather poorly treated. It's as if Eustace doesn't really know or care what is going on outside his room, but then again perhaps that's the point.
More of this, please!
September 2, 2017
I really liked the character of Eustace in this dark, heavy graphic novel. As a bed-ridden eight year old, he was a compelling and funny narrator. Although the book was upsetting from the start - Eustace is a lonely and isolated young man - it becomes increasingly more odd and jarring as his great uncle Lucy arrives on the scene and brings his own chaotic life with him. I get why the story unravelled as it did, but this wasn't explained until the end and that felt too late.
I'd have settled for more of Eustace's life and insights. I think the author would have done much better to tell the story of his engaging and lovely protagonist.
I'd have settled for more of Eustace's life and insights. I think the author would have done much better to tell the story of his engaging and lovely protagonist.
November 21, 2015
Eustace is an odd book; a very odd book. The ugly drawings intrigued me, as did the scrawled words in pencil. However, after a while it became clear that this story was going one way...DOWNHILL. It was quite insipid, I found. Not impressed by the plot and the drawings got to be a bit annoying after a while - as did the handwriting.
August 10, 2021
don't ask me what this is about, i have no idea
February 17, 2013
Eight-year-old Eustace is a very sickly boy. Confined to bed through some unknown malady, he whiles his life away dreading the thin reedy soup (the only thing he can keep down); avoiding the affections of his innumerable aunts; and chatting to us, his imaginary strangers. He used to have imaginary friends, but then they were mean to him in the park, so he stopped speaking to them.
Were the struggle to just survive not such an occupation, the oddities of his life would give him much to tell us about. One day, Eustace's brother, Frank, joined the army to meet men — which, in 1936, is a relatively ballsy thing to do — causing his mother to go into a near-terminal decline. She gave the servants the day off, and went to bed, leaving no-one to bring him any food. Quenching his hunger with narcotic cough syrup is one way to deal with that problem, but perhaps not the smartest.
Then Eustace's uncle crawls out from under his bed, on the lam from the law. His secretary follows soon after. And then the booze and prostitutes arrive…
If it's not clear, Eustace is a strange book. The plot continues getting weirder from thereon in, and ends rather abruptly in a manner which is both the logical end-point and deeply fucked-up. A short epilogue in the form of a newspaper clipping provides the only real resolution any of the characters get, and emphasises how a book which begins as a potentially realistic story told through the heightened experience of a child goes well off in a different direction.
There is a clue from the start that odd things were going to happen though, and that's Steven Harris' artwork. One of the particular joys reading comics offers is the chance of synchronicity between artistic style and thematic elements, and Harris offers that in abundance. Rendered, as best I can tell, entirely in pencil and with copious amounts of white space marking Eustace's fitful drifts into and out of sleep, the most immediately noticeable aspect of Harris' style is his figure work.
Eustace looks thin, wan and sickly; his eyes are sunken deep into his head; his straw-like blond hair is combed-over in a way which suggests premature baldness. But the thing is, those are traits he shares with all Harris' figures. Even the big, boisterous Uncle Lucian, who crawls out from under Eustace's bed and turns his life upside down, has the same cutting cheekbones and thin lips.
While the similarity starts off as a distraction, it soon becomes clear that Harris' intentions are more subtle. The similarity between Eustace and "Oubliette", the first of many prostitutes who ends up in his room, becomes a minor plot point, while Frank and Eustace's mother's appearances aren't exactly supposed to make them look hale and hearty either.
Similarly, a minor confusion at the start concerning Eustace's asides to the reader is inverted quite wonderfully as it becomes clear that they are less aside than we think — and raise further questions about the poor boy's health.
But it does all come back to that weird narrative. Weirdness is good, but when it extends to the pacing, which it does here, it's less commendable. The whole structure of the book is someone with their foot on the accelerator of a clapped-out car pointed straight at a wall. It very slowly builds steam, eventually reaches a pleasant speed, but then never quite slows down, and, eventually, stops, causing pain for all concerned.
It's not the first time that's happened to Eustace, either. The story has its roots in a comic Harris did on the BBC's h2g2 website (a sort of proto-wikipedia based on the Hitchhiker's Guid to the Galaxy which ended up being more of a weirdly-laid-out forum where a lot of the first wave of Britain's online creatives congregated) which was itself suspended abruptly after six months. Harris' other cartoon series, Paper Cuts, lasted over two years, and he returned to the site to pencil a further three last spring.
The book has, in a way, been a decade in the making. Given the level of craft evident from a first-time graphic novelist, that's not something which will surprise you by the time you finish it.
January 2, 2018
A sick child gets a number of odd visitors.
I found this graphic novel a bit weird and the story didn’t seem to go anywhere.
I found this graphic novel a bit weird and the story didn’t seem to go anywhere.
May 24, 2018
This was monumentally All Right and OK. The illustrations were good, in a vaguely Edwardian Steven Appleby sort of way, but the story was confused and meandering. It's one of those "graphic novels" which leans so heavily on the "graphic" that it forgets the "novel", with very little time for story, character, or point. It's something you can get away with in short form, but when it's presented as a whole book it feels rather lightweight.
February 10, 2017
What a strange graphic novel. I really liked the first half but then everything went downhill very fast and I found the story very difficult to follow. The art is quite beautiful and unique but I didn't really like the writing style, it made everything more confusing. I was going to give it at least 3 stars but then after reading the end I can't really give it more than 2.
August 13, 2013
Quite weird reading experience. I didn't think I would like the art, but it's really beautiful and something really fascinating so it was impossible for me not to like it. The story was a bit fucked up and at the end I just had to pause and think what the hell just happened.
February 13, 2016
Eustace is a very strange graphic novel. The drawings are amazing, macabre, crude, and captivating. The novel itself is interesting, confusing, and dark. Once finished, you ask the question, "What in the world did I just read?" I still have no idea.
March 26, 2013
Excellently written and fascinatingly drawn - one to check out. The talents of someone who can not only write a great tale but DRAW it too are enough to fill one with awe. Well done S J Harris.
May 30, 2016
That's not what I expected!
February 8, 2022
This was a really weird graphic novel – more ‘graphic’ than ‘novel’ if you ask me.
Roughly it follows the story of a bedridden & deathly ill 8-year-old, his darkly witty judgements about his odd extended family and largely absent parents, all told through his woozy perspective and grotesque-beautiful illustrations.
There’s something deeply unsettling about S.J Harris’ storytelling, the surreal dialogue and the ample use of blank space on the pages: they paint the picture of a half-lucid subject and the overactive imagination of children.
The first part of the book was best. I enjoyed the janky humour and chilling subtlety of Eustace’s run-ins with his bedside visitors. His third-wall breaking asides to the reader were chilling and interesting to me; however, it all starts to go downhill. After his Uncle Lucien (aka Uncle Lucy) arrives on the scene – he’s been camping out under the kid’s bed, hiding from the law – it becomes deeply fucked up. With Uncle Lucy comes his secretary, cigars, booze and sex workers …
Here, the plot descends into chaos as you can imagine from what I’ve just described. Darkness,debauchery and deadpanning pervade this part – but not in a good way. Requiring a massive list of content warnings, the book gets very intense, very quickly. I’m usually a fan of dark humour, but this was too much for me. It didn’t sit too well with me that what was a preteen’s bedroom becomes a den for drinking and prostitution. I closed the book thinking ‘what the hell just happened?!’ and hours later I still feel the same weird confusion about it. I think this started off strong, but went off the rails – and in a more off the rails, off a viaduct into a river kind of way. Super weird and slightly uncomfortable.
Roughly it follows the story of a bedridden & deathly ill 8-year-old, his darkly witty judgements about his odd extended family and largely absent parents, all told through his woozy perspective and grotesque-beautiful illustrations.
There’s something deeply unsettling about S.J Harris’ storytelling, the surreal dialogue and the ample use of blank space on the pages: they paint the picture of a half-lucid subject and the overactive imagination of children.
The first part of the book was best. I enjoyed the janky humour and chilling subtlety of Eustace’s run-ins with his bedside visitors. His third-wall breaking asides to the reader were chilling and interesting to me; however, it all starts to go downhill. After his Uncle Lucien (aka Uncle Lucy) arrives on the scene – he’s been camping out under the kid’s bed, hiding from the law – it becomes deeply fucked up. With Uncle Lucy comes his secretary, cigars, booze and sex workers …
Here, the plot descends into chaos as you can imagine from what I’ve just described. Darkness,debauchery and deadpanning pervade this part – but not in a good way. Requiring a massive list of content warnings, the book gets very intense, very quickly. I’m usually a fan of dark humour, but this was too much for me. It didn’t sit too well with me that what was a preteen’s bedroom becomes a den for drinking and prostitution. I closed the book thinking ‘what the hell just happened?!’ and hours later I still feel the same weird confusion about it. I think this started off strong, but went off the rails – and in a more off the rails, off a viaduct into a river kind of way. Super weird and slightly uncomfortable.
April 16, 2021
One of those books that I really enjoyed, but also felt overwhelmingly confused by. The artwork is beautifully hideous and I think without it I wouldn't have stuck with the story to the end. The first half of the story is pretty straightforward, then things get weird. I usually love weird, but this was consciously unpleasant and repulsive and didn't really fit with the humour of the first half of the book. I think the only way to sum this up is to say that I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone I know.
January 18, 2020
Hard to know if this is actually factual or not but quite a read. Sometimes hard to know what was going on with some of the characters looking similar but a very curious read and you wonder indicative of the treatment of children during the time
November 5, 2023
Heavy in some moments and hilariously observant in others, poor Eustace is at ther mercy of his non caring takers. Dark and wild ride that a chronically ill boy is somehow both the center of and barely a character in.
June 2, 2018
That was weird.
May 15, 2018
The artwork was truly great - you step into the strange and monochrome world of sickly little Eustace.
February 11, 2019
Great weird art style, incredibly unsettling story.
March 14, 2020
If Edward Gorey was more into sexual depravity than the macabre, or if CABARET took place in a sickly 8 yr old’s bedroom and/or mind, it’d be this delicate graphite nightmare.
September 20, 2020
just like mr punch
a dark tale of oddity
confusing ending
a dark tale of oddity
confusing ending
July 7, 2021
The stars are for the art. The story.. hmm.. deeply surreal and erratic.
Read
December 27, 2023Revolting.
January 18, 2025
I really wanted this whole story to be about a sick kid and his soup and then it took a wild turn and I literally have no clue what I just read. 2 stars for soup and the great art style.
March 18, 2025
It’s so weird. There are charming bits but mostly it just made me crave Dickens and other dry British stuff. Idk why it devolves so much towards the end
October 24, 2016
Beautiful artwork and a good writing style, but I don't get the story.
June 11, 2014
I have read a lot of Graphic Novels. 'Eustace' was something, I had not experienced before. After the first couple of slow chapters I thought ‘this is not too bad, but it will be an atypical story where we are suppose to feel for the child and be devastated and sad as he passes away.’ However the books second half takes off into this absurd but entertaining tale of debauchery and vice which Eustace finds himself trapped in. It really is surreal and entertaining and to find out that in some aspects it is based on a true story makes it even more worthwhile. The final icing on the cake is the Illustrations/ Art. Maybe the highest quality and most simplistic beautiful sketches I have seen in a novel. Truly impressive. I am surprised that Eustace has had so few reviews on goodreads, it deserves to be one that everyone is talking about. I had started this review thinking I would give it 4 stars but I believe I have talked myself into giving it the 5 stars it deserves. Note, it is probably better if the story comes to you as much as a surprise as possible it will add to the experience, So avoid those long winded explanatory goodread reviews if you can.
November 9, 2024
2.5 Stars.
This has to be one of the weirdest and odd graphic novels I’ve ever read. I am not sure if I liked it or disliked it so I am in a predicament right now, lol.
The art style is unique in its kind, never seen something drawn this way, so crude and grotesque. The fact that the dialog texts are written by hand, makes it even more special, a lot of effort was put in this book, and I appreciate that a lot.
I was really invested in Eustace’s and Frankie’s relationship, they were united and they had a special bond, it reminded me of my own brother.
However... I got so lost in the story, I felt that a lot of things were happening at the same time. The first half of the book was pretty cool, I was planning on giving it a 3.5 stars, but that other half… I was just not getting it.
The more you read, it has a ridiculous amount of more characters,I lost myself in all of the names, not to mention there's a lot of nudity, dark humor, violence, sexual situations, and everything in front of a minor.
Sooooo... I’m just not pretty sure what I’ve just read, haha.
This has to be one of the weirdest and odd graphic novels I’ve ever read. I am not sure if I liked it or disliked it so I am in a predicament right now, lol.
The art style is unique in its kind, never seen something drawn this way, so crude and grotesque. The fact that the dialog texts are written by hand, makes it even more special, a lot of effort was put in this book, and I appreciate that a lot.
I was really invested in Eustace’s and Frankie’s relationship, they were united and they had a special bond, it reminded me of my own brother.
However... I got so lost in the story, I felt that a lot of things were happening at the same time. The first half of the book was pretty cool, I was planning on giving it a 3.5 stars, but that other half… I was just not getting it.
The more you read, it has a ridiculous amount of more characters,I lost myself in all of the names, not to mention there's a lot of nudity, dark humor, violence, sexual situations, and everything in front of a minor.
Sooooo... I’m just not pretty sure what I’ve just read, haha.
November 30, 2015
This was absolutely insane. I think I liked it, but I'm a little overwhelmed and bit unsure.
First off, I absolutely loved the art style. I'm not a big fan of the typical 'comic' style so this was something different, though I will say (and it may just be me) I found it hard to identify some of the characters in the drawings and got a little confused, but it was easy to piece together from the text.
It was also really messed up. Luckily, I love messed up stories so I enjoyed how weird and eccentric it was, and actually how disturbing it was. There's a whole host of prostitutes and a mad woman and mistreatment and some really creepy old men, but it was so different I couldn't help but find it interesting.
This book is highly engrossing, disturbing and definitely not for everyone, but I personally liked it.
First off, I absolutely loved the art style. I'm not a big fan of the typical 'comic' style so this was something different, though I will say (and it may just be me) I found it hard to identify some of the characters in the drawings and got a little confused, but it was easy to piece together from the text.
It was also really messed up. Luckily, I love messed up stories so I enjoyed how weird and eccentric it was, and actually how disturbing it was. There's a whole host of prostitutes and a mad woman and mistreatment and some really creepy old men, but it was so different I couldn't help but find it interesting.
This book is highly engrossing, disturbing and definitely not for everyone, but I personally liked it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews