I Ate the Whole World to Find You

by Rachel Ang

An entire sea of water can't sink a ship…unless it gets inside

I Ate the Whole World to Find You maps the topography of trauma, treasures, and loss imposed onto the body of Jenny, a twenty-something-going-on-thirty-something partial hot mess who’s routing her way more firmly into adulthood. As she navigates friendship, family, and romantic relationships, will her inability to communicate destroy her, or ultimately be her rebirth?

A coworker-turned-prospective-lover confesses a hard-to-swallow fetish. A train ride fantastically goes off the rails as old habits get dragged across the tracks. Cousins revisit summer holiday bliss—or was it really horror? Exes fumble an attempt to reconnect over a dip in the pool on a squelching summer day. And an expectant mother slips into an unusual place as she embarks on a communion with her baby more pure than language can accommodate.

Set against an exquisitely lush Australian backdrop, Rachel Ang’s pencils are fluid yet scratchy, precise and evocative, bringing to life the inner and external world of Jenny with stunning realism and gushing imagination. Sprinkled with speculative fiction and fantasy, Ang’s radiant debut collection introduces a dynamic voice to comics, and establishes Ang as one of the most exciting short-story writers working in comics today.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Fiction, Short Stories, Horror, Graphic Novels Comics

Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2025

About the author

Rachel Ang is an artist and writer working on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation (Melbourne, Australia). Their work has been published by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and kuš! Rachel’s first book Swimsuit was published by Glom Press in 2018, and they were a contributor to the Eisner Award winning anthology Drawing Power: women’s stories of sexual violence, harassment, and survival in 2019.

Rachel still lives in their hometown, where they draw comics and work in Architecture.

Reviews

[Quinn Rennerfeldt · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the art aligns perfectly with the emotional interiority *chef's kiss*

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a graphic-novel-in-short-stories following Jenny, a somewhat hapless young Australian woman. The stories were moving, often slipping into the realm of the surreal. I particularly liked the last one! The art was fantastic and I especially appreciated how “real” the characters looked. There’s something grounding about a fantastically bizarre graphic novel starring people who look like the folks you’d see on your commute. The essence of Jenny’s career and relationship struggles will feel relatable to twenty-somethings and those who’ve recently emerged from that stage of life, even if the specifics are VERY unique!

I enjoyed this a lot and I look forward to checking out other works from this author. This book also confirms my bias that if Drawn & Quarterly published it, it’s going to be a good one!

[Vivi Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still learning how to take my time with graphic novels, I tend to tear through them like a wild animal. If you gobble up a text as rich as this one too quickly it WILL make you sick!!!! This book is crazyyyy like struck me somewhere in my bone marrow and touched the bottom of the mouldy well of sadness I carry around everywhere.... like what the hell I thought that mouldy well of sadness was unnameable and unreachable??! guess not...!! everyone should go read this book in a major way. My only critique is that I wanted more, and I wanted to spend more time getting to know Jenny and her world.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ATE THE WHOLE WORLD TO FIND YOU combines my two favorite flavors: strange and evocative. They draw a beautifully reverberating world that transcends language so that we can see the splendor of it all anew. This collection is a hallucination, a holy text, an experience to return to again and again.

[Keen Reader · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two issues sprung out straight away with this book, no page numbers and the two main characters looked far too alike, especially in the opening pages. This looked to be going somewhere interesting and then something really, dark, confusing and bizarre occurred and all I can liken it too, it was like someone had ripped out about two chapters (not that you'd know without the page numbers!). And from then on this just read like one, long, dark, drawn out, confusion-fest?...

[michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

i randomly came across this graphic novel and was drawn in by its title. i ate the whole world to find you. that could mean so many things. it could happen in so many ways.

once i realized that the drawn and published quarterly really meant the same character jenny but at different moments and some recurring characters, and not just a linear story, i was able to lean back and enjoy it more (enjoy is subjective -- not that it was necessarily positive, but engage and indulge in the stories being told). cause man, was this heavy all around. we move from story to story and jenny is being put through awkward, painful, scary, numbing experiences. it feels real, and that's what makes it painful. the drawing style matches it very well. a bit messy, dark and shadowed.

[Estibaliz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't remember what first brought me to this title (apart from its availability at the library), and I certainly can't tell what might have attracted me to it in the first place; but I certainly can tell you I didn't remember that it was a collection of short stories when I started reading it. And, therefore, I was expecting something very different after the first chapter (probably the most interesting one?).

But the truth of the matter is that this graphic novel wasn't for me, and I couldn't really connect to it. The fact that the stories are all so loosely interconnected (they only have this one character in common to bring them together), and that some of them seem to be so conceptual, makes for an easy reading, in that they are all pretty short and scarce in dialogue stories, but not one that I really enjoyed that much.

I will admit that the whole thing is pretty evocative of emotions, and pretty dark ones at that, and the art can be as beautiful as it can be utterly ugly at times. Just like life, I guess...

But, yeah... I feel sorry for those that are saying in their reviews this is their first attempt at reading a graphic novel, and didn't enjoy much. Please, keep trying with something else, because this is not just it...

[Maxie Froelicher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't realise it was meant to be a collection of short stories with the through line being the main character, Jenny, and that it wasn't really chronological or meant to fully go together until reading the authors note at the end. The art style, while beautiful, is not my favorite, so I think that also made me feel more ambivalent to this collection. I also didn't understand the title. This collection wasn't for me but it was very well done; it definitely has it's audience out there.

[Charlie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn’t really understand this book which unfortunately lead to my disenjoyemnt. I don’t really have an opinion outside of that.

[Sarah M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the sylvanian families feature

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me unfortunately.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I enjoy dreamlike and emotional narratives, this one flew over my head a bit. The artist is a master of emotional facial expressions, yet I often had a difficult time distinguishing characters (it took me way too long to realize that Jenny was the main character throughout all stories). There were bits of each story that were effectively disturbing, sprinkling a very real sense of dread into stories that were otherwise euphoric, depressing, and many feelings in between. More cohesion between stories would enhance the experience for me personally, but I see the psychedelic vision and respect it.

[Charvi · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5

This book was a mess and ugh I really thought I would love it. The art style was really beautiful but it's so hard to tell what the hell is going on. There are no page numbers and very easy to miss headings for each story. A lot of the characters look so alike that I was continuously confused what the hell was happening and who all are we following in this journey. The stories seemed too disconnected. I understood a few of them and liked even fewer. This was just a mess. I see the creative vision I think but oh my god there needed to be some sort of author's note in the beginning to guide the reader through this journey at teh very least.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of those emotionally tight but artistically loose works that I really liked. There’s some originally storytelling happening here in distinctive art that keeps me excited for this medium. Drawn & Quarterly is especially good at publishing authors doing interesting work like this one.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Peter Hollo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful short stories, some hallucinatory, some more down-to-earth, in Ang's unique artistic style.
Ang is careful to leave all these stories open - don't expect resolutions, exactly. Instead, expect vivid emotional journeys with a central character who's flawed but sympathetic and yet oh so familiar.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artwork is absolutely beautiful. It did get long in the story a few times though.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Melbourne cartoonist Rachel Ang's I Ate the Whole World to Find You (2025), an edgy, always interesting, sometimes disturbing Drawn & Quarterly production, is a collection of five short comics stories focused on the psychological health of one woman, Jenny, who lives on the edge of trauma. I would say that the specific focus is on what it means to live in a woman's body within a man's world.

The first story, "Hunger," is the most arresting/strange, the story of Jenny's crush gone weird, as in feederism (a kink or ocd obsession that urges someone to want to make their beloved ever and ever fatter, to the point of vastly reduced mobility). But in this story it's a kind of allegory for physical and psychic dissociation in some relationships.

Other broken relationships abound. One involves sexual abuse. One involves almost constant physical/psychic pain, never adequately addressed by the largely still male medical establishment. One involves childbirth, which ends sort of upbeat, the first cry, ""A long strong pure wail."

The art matches the emotional turmoil/struggle, sketchy, loose, as in searching in the darkness. And there's plenty of darkness, though Jenny is relatable/likable, too. Ang is really good at capturing emotions in quick-sketch fashion.

[Robin Allsopp · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is one of those books that is so raw and emotive to read that it feels wrong to rate. dreamlike and poignant, this series of short graphic stories twisted me around and left me feeling deeply something that i don’t have words to explain.

i can’t say i enjoyed this book, and i can’t say i am glad to have read it. i can say it is an exceptional work. it’s masterful and captures profound and ordinary emotions with gorgeously visceral illustrations. the dark and twisty unreality of this style just isn’t the vibe for me, sadly

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for drawing, 3 stars for writing. I thought this was very dark and depressing but had beautiful drawing, especially the panels depicting water and light. The text was a little sparse, and often the case with graphic novels, it was difficult at times to know for sure what was going on. The dialogue felt firmly situated in a 20-something frame of experience, where emotions and expectations are overwhelming. I probably could have slowed down my read to absorb the symbolism a bit better, but I flew through it. I'd be excited to see more from this author, especially if the text is richer.

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderfully illustrated; hallucinogenic strangeness mixed with subtle social realism in a lavish symphony. Ang's drawing is scratchy and a bit skittish, the narratives unfolding with wit, murky depths and Wallace and Gromit references. the whole thing was intricate and involving in the way only graphic novels can be. just fell short for me personally at the end - the sequencing ended up feeling a bit too jumpy, and I was left wanting more from the conclusion and character development.

[rndgmoat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another stunning work published by Drawn and Quarterly, this is an astounding book of short stories that will leave you gutted and in awe. A first-rate example of what graphic storytelling can be. The middle story, about two cousins and their childhood trauma, is the highlight, but really, all the stories are great in their ability to match well-written dialogue with surrealistic and horror influenced art.

[Donne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was hard to read since it was about feeling broken. I wanted to feel a connection or a hope or something. But the art just made it hard for me to do that. I had a difficult time telling the characters apart other than Jenny and Willow. It took me a few pages in each story to determine who the character was Jenny was interacting with.

[Jess]

DNF on Aug 25, 2025 - I borrowed this from the library based solely on the title and cover. I read the first short story, and skimmed through the rest. It's not for me. The art style really works for the tone of this collection.

[Madeline Van Husen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s been 10 years since I read a graphic novel and the last time was in an English class so I had more guidance. I know there’s an art to absorbing graphic novels that I’m lacking. This was beautiful and had a complex-ish story line.

[Carina Stopenski · Rating 3 out of 5]

a peculiar collection, and as always with a collection, some stories are better than others. i struggled a lot with the art style and keeping characters straight, but there were some special moments that saved these narratives.

[Azzamckazza · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the hell was this? Scribbled and incomprehensible. Could not connect with any of the stories due to not knowing who anyone was because they all looked the same or were off model. Picked it up because of the Carmen Maria Machado recommendation on the front but gave up halfway through

[rose]

not at library (yet)

[Mahika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you scribe for this gorgeous book

[sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

need to reread immediately bc I didn’t digest everything the first time 😜