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The End
Assembled from Nilsen’s sketchbooks in the year following the death of his fiancée in 2005, The End is a collection of short strips about loss, paralysis, waiting, and transformation.
The End is a concept album in different styles, a meditation on paying attention, an abstracted autobiography and a travelogue, reflecting the progress of his struggle to reconcile the great upheaval of a death, and finding a new life on the other side. The book blends Nilsen’s disparate styles, from the iconic simplicity and collaged drawings of his Monologues for the Coming Plague to the finely rendered Dogs and Water and Big Questions. Originally released in magazine form in 2007, The End has been updated and expanded to more than twice its original length, including a 16-page full-color section.
The End is a concept album in different styles, a meditation on paying attention, an abstracted autobiography and a travelogue, reflecting the progress of his struggle to reconcile the great upheaval of a death, and finding a new life on the other side. The book blends Nilsen’s disparate styles, from the iconic simplicity and collaged drawings of his Monologues for the Coming Plague to the finely rendered Dogs and Water and Big Questions. Originally released in magazine form in 2007, The End has been updated and expanded to more than twice its original length, including a 16-page full-color section.
79 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 14, 2007
About the author
Anders Nilsen
76 books246 followersAnders Nilsen is an American illustration and comics artist. He is the author of ten books including Big Questions, The End, and Poetry is Useless as well as the coloring book A Walk in Eden. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Poetry Magazine, Kramer's Ergot, Pitchfork, Medium and elsewhere. His comics have been translated into several languages overseas and his painting and drawing have been exhibited internationally. Nilsen's work has received three Ignatz awards as well as the Lynd Ward Prize for the Graphic Novel and Big Questions was listed as a New York Times Notable Book in 2011. Nilsen grew up in Minneapolis and Northern New Hampshire. He studied art in New Mexico and lived in Chicago for over a decade. He currently lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
May 20, 2016
This seems like a pretty true depiction of grief (at least grief as experienced by someone who doesn't have serious obligations such as children and can wallow, and also take multiple foreign vacations). Possibly it would be meaningful to someone who just lost a partner. I can't say. I recently lost a family member -- an aunt, to whom I was close, but certainly not as close as the relationships depicted here -- and I haven't found that reading about other people's loss, fictional or not, holds any greater appeal for me than it did a few months earlier. Possibly this is just a matter of taste or personal psychology, or perhaps I just have had enough people die and known enough people who lost those close to them that I don't need stories about it.
The art overall didn't do much for me, although I found some of color panels interesting. I prefered Nilsen's simpler, heavier line work in Rage of Poseidon.
The art overall didn't do much for me, although I found some of color panels interesting. I prefered Nilsen's simpler, heavier line work in Rage of Poseidon.
December 28, 2018
3.75/5stars
May 19, 2016
Don't Go Where I Can't Follow is a book Nilsen put together after the death of his partner, a kind of scrapbook initially devised exclusively for his family and friends as a kind of remembrance. The End is culled from his sketchbooks and letters and photographs, and it is of course about grieving, and grief, and getting through, and all the things he went through. . . which is, as it turns out, not all that different from what we all go through when we grieve. . . or at least many of the same motions. . . all those stages. And can we learn from Nilsen's meditations about death and dying and grief, like all the novels and memoirs about it? Of course, and in this one it is no different, really. Even if he didn't really construct it for us outsiders. Maybe in a way it is even more powerful because of that, that it is not self-consciously "literary." I found Don't Go Where I Can't Follow more moving because it felt more raw and immediate and in the moment of a young man's baffling loss of a loving partner. Its focus is more on her.
The End is more contemplative, more about Nilsen, and his coping and failures to cope and his trying to regain his sense of humor. They are a very nice and affecting pair, these two books, and well worth checking out. There's a vulnerability and spareness to The End that is typical of his work, but in the spareness there is much depth, I find. It's almost like a principle of comics; the more detail you provide, the less connected you feel with the story (McCloud talks about that in Understanding Comics). Here, this story, so much his, also feels like it is yours, or that you share a kind of intimacy with him. I'm thankful I read the book and highly recommend them, but as a pair.
The End is more contemplative, more about Nilsen, and his coping and failures to cope and his trying to regain his sense of humor. They are a very nice and affecting pair, these two books, and well worth checking out. There's a vulnerability and spareness to The End that is typical of his work, but in the spareness there is much depth, I find. It's almost like a principle of comics; the more detail you provide, the less connected you feel with the story (McCloud talks about that in Understanding Comics). Here, this story, so much his, also feels like it is yours, or that you share a kind of intimacy with him. I'm thankful I read the book and highly recommend them, but as a pair.
August 12, 2013
Live with the weight of a cinder block on your chest until you can almost believe that she is still alive.
She never left. She's in the other room. Call her name and you'll hear her voice. Say that you do. Say it: Her name, and all you get in return is the emptiness of the apartment echoing out the sadness so evident in your voice.
She never left. She's in the other room. Call her name and you'll hear her voice. Say that you do. Say it: Her name, and all you get in return is the emptiness of the apartment echoing out the sadness so evident in your voice.
February 20, 2022
I teared up when I saw the last page filled with a broken, but healing emptiness that the last four panels held. The breathing human and the mind ghost are gone. The story isn’t done. Nilsen said it himself, he isn’t finished writing about his lost partner. I’m not done writing about the passed either: not about my grandmother who taught me to sew, or my cat who changed my career path, or my aunt who filled the role of the mother position better than my mother ever will. I am not done writing about the dead, about the generations of family who are still with me. Are we ever done with writing about the dead?
For me, this novel was emotionally difficult but rewarding to get through. My grandmother passed away in 2020. Throughout my childhood, I lived in her basement. I spent every night having the meals that she cooked. I spent most of my weeks waiting for her to cut up her strawberries and sprinkle her magic sugar on them to make them taste better. When I came home from school, she greeted me by putting a bookmark into her novel, taking off her reading glasses, and hugging me. I wasn’t much of a hugger when I was younger. I’m glad that she made me hug her and my grandpa each time I left. Before I knew it, I was going into middle school and moving into an apartment with my divorced parents. I only saw my grandparents once or twice a month if I was lucky.
My grandmother taught me how to sew before I left. When I lived with her, I would shakenly walk to her computer room, my eyes filled with tears, and would present her with a plushie with a hole in it. She’d caress it and bend down, asking if she could take it from me. I’d nod. Out of everyone I could trust with my plushies, I would trust her. My grandmother would hold the plushie just like they were a real animal, and to me, they are. She knew how meaningful each of them were to me, how they were my only friends, how they were the only ones I could bring myself to cry into when my parents fought or when I managed to make a simple mistake that was a crime in my mind. She knew, deep down, that my home life was built with straw in sinking sand. My grandmother would sew my plushies, would say that they were going into surgery. My grandmother used to be a nurse. She knew what to do all too well. Sometimes, she’d let me watch. She would take the needle, put the matching colored string through the hole, and would weave in and out until the wound in my friend was mended. Before I left…she taught me how to sew.
When she passed in 2020, I wrote her eulogy. My family members questioned and yelled why I never shed tear throughout the whole funeral. This book says everything I wanted to say to them and more. It says how I sobbed in my basement after processing her death a month later. It says how it’s both dreadful and empowering to go on because of them. It shows how I want to ask her so many questions, but the answers are already inside me. It shows how I wish I could go back to talk to her one last time.
My aunt passed from an overdose when I was six. She introduced me to many things, most notably my first musical, Mamma Mia! When she passed, I told my mom that it was just the circle of life, that I wasn’t sad because I understood death. I was a very perceptive kid, I was told I understood more than adults did, that I was an old soul. This book is everything I understood and everything I felt behind the scenes. I don’t think the grieving process ever goes away. It gets better, but it’s still there. The conversations I’ve recently had with myself in the dark of my basement are the ones that remind me of the conversations between Nilsen and his partner. They are empty and nostalgic and bittersweet…and they have all the memories you wish you could relive with your loved ones.
The End by Anders Nilsen is a devastating scrapbook dedicated to his passed partner of the pieces of grieving and the spirals that follow. The book illustrates the tragedy of losing someone too soon and losing loved ones in general. It doesn’t cut out the raw, pouring quiet and flood of sorrow, but in fact, embraces it. It’s beautiful (but feels wrong to say it as such) and melancholic and complicated. It meditates on the abstract ideas that the brain makes when trying to make sense of death. It talks about what isn’t talk about, and therefore becomes one of the most important novels about death and grief that there is. It is geuiene and weighty -- it bleeds the heart of the loss for the reader and makes the reader feel both hurt and healed simultaneously.
Thank you, Nilsen. You’ve put into a book everything I could never say.
For me, this novel was emotionally difficult but rewarding to get through. My grandmother passed away in 2020. Throughout my childhood, I lived in her basement. I spent every night having the meals that she cooked. I spent most of my weeks waiting for her to cut up her strawberries and sprinkle her magic sugar on them to make them taste better. When I came home from school, she greeted me by putting a bookmark into her novel, taking off her reading glasses, and hugging me. I wasn’t much of a hugger when I was younger. I’m glad that she made me hug her and my grandpa each time I left. Before I knew it, I was going into middle school and moving into an apartment with my divorced parents. I only saw my grandparents once or twice a month if I was lucky.
My grandmother taught me how to sew before I left. When I lived with her, I would shakenly walk to her computer room, my eyes filled with tears, and would present her with a plushie with a hole in it. She’d caress it and bend down, asking if she could take it from me. I’d nod. Out of everyone I could trust with my plushies, I would trust her. My grandmother would hold the plushie just like they were a real animal, and to me, they are. She knew how meaningful each of them were to me, how they were my only friends, how they were the only ones I could bring myself to cry into when my parents fought or when I managed to make a simple mistake that was a crime in my mind. She knew, deep down, that my home life was built with straw in sinking sand. My grandmother would sew my plushies, would say that they were going into surgery. My grandmother used to be a nurse. She knew what to do all too well. Sometimes, she’d let me watch. She would take the needle, put the matching colored string through the hole, and would weave in and out until the wound in my friend was mended. Before I left…she taught me how to sew.
When she passed in 2020, I wrote her eulogy. My family members questioned and yelled why I never shed tear throughout the whole funeral. This book says everything I wanted to say to them and more. It says how I sobbed in my basement after processing her death a month later. It says how it’s both dreadful and empowering to go on because of them. It shows how I want to ask her so many questions, but the answers are already inside me. It shows how I wish I could go back to talk to her one last time.
My aunt passed from an overdose when I was six. She introduced me to many things, most notably my first musical, Mamma Mia! When she passed, I told my mom that it was just the circle of life, that I wasn’t sad because I understood death. I was a very perceptive kid, I was told I understood more than adults did, that I was an old soul. This book is everything I understood and everything I felt behind the scenes. I don’t think the grieving process ever goes away. It gets better, but it’s still there. The conversations I’ve recently had with myself in the dark of my basement are the ones that remind me of the conversations between Nilsen and his partner. They are empty and nostalgic and bittersweet…and they have all the memories you wish you could relive with your loved ones.
The End by Anders Nilsen is a devastating scrapbook dedicated to his passed partner of the pieces of grieving and the spirals that follow. The book illustrates the tragedy of losing someone too soon and losing loved ones in general. It doesn’t cut out the raw, pouring quiet and flood of sorrow, but in fact, embraces it. It’s beautiful (but feels wrong to say it as such) and melancholic and complicated. It meditates on the abstract ideas that the brain makes when trying to make sense of death. It talks about what isn’t talk about, and therefore becomes one of the most important novels about death and grief that there is. It is geuiene and weighty -- it bleeds the heart of the loss for the reader and makes the reader feel both hurt and healed simultaneously.
Thank you, Nilsen. You’ve put into a book everything I could never say.
March 22, 2016
I know we all grieve differently but I just couldn't get on-board with Nilsen's muddled and more than a little selfish perspective portrayed here. This book pushed all my buttons. It screamed of self indulgence and lack of responsibility. Most people do not have the luxury of grieving to the all-encompassing extremes Nilsen depicts here so instead of empathizing I was alienated from the protagonist. I can't stress enough that this is my emotional reaction to this book as opposed to a rational review of its value as literature and art.
December 10, 2021
I read Big Questions this year and it was amazing. I just had fell in love with Nilsen's style.
This is about grief, sorrow, despair.
A graphic memoir and it's personal.
I saw ink smears, misdrawn lines, fingerprints.
I saw emotions in the way words are written.
It's sad; diving into blue (that he'd used as mono-color).
And then into the black (that he'd used as other mono-color).
It was beautiful.
I saw that there will be a Revised and Expanded Edition for this one. I wish I can have it one day.
This is about grief, sorrow, despair.
A graphic memoir and it's personal.
I saw ink smears, misdrawn lines, fingerprints.
I saw emotions in the way words are written.
It's sad; diving into blue (that he'd used as mono-color).
And then into the black (that he'd used as other mono-color).
It was beautiful.
I saw that there will be a Revised and Expanded Edition for this one. I wish I can have it one day.
devastatingly beautiful plus beautifully devastation minus zero
xoxo
ikoan @office reading.
July 10, 2013
A memoir that manages to cope with loss without being self-indulgent; filled with appreciation, self-awareness, and most importantly, grace. I'd recommend this to those grappling with the loss of a partner.
March 22, 2025
Questa graphic novel è la rappresentazione plastica di che cosa voglia dire elaborare un lutto; un lutto reale. L'autore di "The End", Anders Nilsen, traccia, con quest'opera, le tappe che il lutto gli ha richiesto di sopportare e affrontare. Nilsen perde la sua compagna il 13 novembre 2005 e ci racconta dunque che cosa voglia dire esperire un vuoto, una parte di sé rimossa per sempre, senza appello, e che cosa si provi a mettere insieme i pezzi, frantumati per sempre da questo evento.
Una prova altamente toccante, che consiglierei di non leggere a chi avesse subito un lutto recente, dal quale non è almeno passato un anno...
Una prova altamente toccante, che consiglierei di non leggere a chi avesse subito un lutto recente, dal quale non è almeno passato un anno...
August 19, 2022
This book made me cry many times, because it made me imagine how terrible it would be to experience a loss like the one described. Although I bought the book because I enjoy graphic novels, it was the written parts I found the most poignant and emotive. I initially didn’t love the art, but it’s simplicity grew on me as I went through the book. I didn’t like the mistakes being included, but I guess that they are there to convey that life isn’t perfect and we have to accept that, which I suppose captures the message of the book perfectly.
June 14, 2018
I liked it ... i kind of really liked it ... certainly it resonated. But because i have middle aged eyes and some of the text is written quite small and in pale blue it was quite difficult to read in places ... tho' in a way that difficulty felt appropriate. It's a pretty raw story and the generosity and bravery of the author/illustrator is appreciated.
March 14, 2019
Wow....idk, this book made me cry. I think this is the strongest I've ever felt the loss of someone I've never met. I'm so happy this was comics, I couldn't imagine the intensity of loss and grief communicated any other way. This book is, like, horrific and unique and sacred.
November 10, 2022
I’m realizing what I like the most of anders nilsen’s work is the choices he makes in mixing his styles together. Breaking what felt like an unspoken rule, showing a lot of depth in every book. This book’s grief didn’t speak to my particular grief in this moment, but I will gladly read any comics he makes.
June 6, 2018
I would give this book 4.5 stars! I had no idea that I needed this right now on my grief journey, but I definitely did. And I’m so incredibly grateful I stumbled upon it.
This collection was incredibly insightful and helpful for defining grief. Anders Nilsen hit the nail on the head when it comes to losing someone that you can’t picture life without; he truly expressed how grief can be disorienting and teach us how weird life is without the people that we define it with.
I relate so much to the portions of this collection where he describes what life is like without his partner and how now all of this free time exists. Free time means extra time to cry and to spend missing those you have lost and reminiscing and having cathartic moments and reliving awful moments and remembering the best ones and everything.
I would recommend this to all and any who want to find a way to keep realizing that they are still alive despite immense grief in their life. It was a good lesson for me in my journey and I hope it can be to others.
This collection was incredibly insightful and helpful for defining grief. Anders Nilsen hit the nail on the head when it comes to losing someone that you can’t picture life without; he truly expressed how grief can be disorienting and teach us how weird life is without the people that we define it with.
I relate so much to the portions of this collection where he describes what life is like without his partner and how now all of this free time exists. Free time means extra time to cry and to spend missing those you have lost and reminiscing and having cathartic moments and reliving awful moments and remembering the best ones and everything.
I would recommend this to all and any who want to find a way to keep realizing that they are still alive despite immense grief in their life. It was a good lesson for me in my journey and I hope it can be to others.
December 10, 2019
Poignant and deals with loss of a loved one/existential crisis
June 25, 2015
Prologue - 5
Is that all there is? - 5
Since you've been gone I can do whatever I want all the time - 5
I have two lives - 5
Solve for x - 4
In the future - 4
Pulling a giant block - 5
25 dollars - 5
Eternity analogy - 4.5
You were born so you're free - 2.5
Talking to the dead - 4.5
How can I prepare you for what's to follow? - 1.5
Only sometimes - 5
It will crack your soul like a mirror and you'll feel silly and condescending for considering to rate it at all.
I hear the shuffling of leaves outside.
Is that all there is? - 5
Since you've been gone I can do whatever I want all the time - 5
I have two lives - 5
Solve for x - 4
In the future - 4
Pulling a giant block - 5
25 dollars - 5
Eternity analogy - 4.5
You were born so you're free - 2.5
Talking to the dead - 4.5
How can I prepare you for what's to follow? - 1.5
Only sometimes - 5
It will crack your soul like a mirror and you'll feel silly and condescending for considering to rate it at all.
I hear the shuffling of leaves outside.
April 20, 2017
It feels wrong to write that grief is beautiful, but some of the panels in this book are absolutely beautiful. There isn't anything astounding in this which would merit a higher rating however it was very refreshing (and dare I say it, charming) in how raw it was. You could feel Nilsen's grief pouring through the pages. I haven't lost a romantic partner to death but I have lost friends and it was a start throwback to that time. Very artfully done.
September 14, 2013
As always, Nilsen's work is heart-breaking, melancholic, and brilliant.
May 6, 2014
Simple, sad, and true.
November 18, 2014
Devastating work. Emotionally difficult but rewarding. Beautiful.
July 1, 2015
Another existential heartpunch.
July 6, 2015
Death is best approached simply and honestly. This collection does both and it does it well.
January 16, 2016
Good grief, but would not want to grieve again.
April 16, 2018
Drawn from the author's personal experience of grief and coping with loss. At times incoherent, as coping with grief can be, but still a poignant read.
October 23, 2023
📖 Questa in foto è la terza edizione di “The end” di Anders Nilsen edito @add_editore . La terza perchè quando si parla delle proprie esperienze, sembra che manchi sempre qualcosa. In questa storia l’autore ci porta nella sua vita, in quello che è stato il prima, il durante e il dopo la perdita della sua compagna Cheryl.
🤍 “Ovviamente nella vita vera le cose non finiscono mai. […] L’esperienza del dolore non traccia un arco narrativo semplice. È un casino.”, dice Anders nella postfazione. In queste pagine c’è un racconto completo che unisce dolore e complessità, e le ultime pagine racchiudono insegnamenti e immagini che non sempre sono facili da associare a periodi bui come questi.
🧠 In psicologia il lutto prevede delle fasi, proprio perché la rielaborazione della perdita di una persona è un vero e proprio lavoro. Ve le riportiamo qui di seguito:
* Rifiuto e negazione
* Rabbia
* Patteggiamento o contrattazione
* Depressione
* Accettazione.
🫶 Quello che l’autore fa, invece, è regalarci quello che lui ha imparato dalla sua esperienza personale:
1. Parlare della m0rt3 è strano
2. Il lutto è appiccicoso
3. La m0rt3 è l’assenza di una cosa
4. Lutto vuol dire che fai parte di un club (tanto vale che vai agli incontri)
5. Non stai sempre in lutto per la cosa che pensi
🖼️ Le illustrazioni legate al testo rendono questa GN davvero una risorsa preziosa per tutt* quant*, addett* ai lavori e non.
🤍 “Ovviamente nella vita vera le cose non finiscono mai. […] L’esperienza del dolore non traccia un arco narrativo semplice. È un casino.”, dice Anders nella postfazione. In queste pagine c’è un racconto completo che unisce dolore e complessità, e le ultime pagine racchiudono insegnamenti e immagini che non sempre sono facili da associare a periodi bui come questi.
🧠 In psicologia il lutto prevede delle fasi, proprio perché la rielaborazione della perdita di una persona è un vero e proprio lavoro. Ve le riportiamo qui di seguito:
* Rifiuto e negazione
* Rabbia
* Patteggiamento o contrattazione
* Depressione
* Accettazione.
🫶 Quello che l’autore fa, invece, è regalarci quello che lui ha imparato dalla sua esperienza personale:
1. Parlare della m0rt3 è strano
2. Il lutto è appiccicoso
3. La m0rt3 è l’assenza di una cosa
4. Lutto vuol dire che fai parte di un club (tanto vale che vai agli incontri)
5. Non stai sempre in lutto per la cosa che pensi
🖼️ Le illustrazioni legate al testo rendono questa GN davvero una risorsa preziosa per tutt* quant*, addett* ai lavori e non.
January 7, 2023
So much of Nilsen’s work finds power in abstractions - it’s like you’re slowly working around a point that feels inevitable but he wants to lead you there through a circuitous route. It’s profoundly beautiful, at times both full of absences and full of details, but there’s definitely a distancing effect to much of his work
But not here. It’s brutal and direct and achingly beautiful and deeply, deeply sad. It could be one of the greatest works of art about negotiating grief ever created. In fact it definitely is. I was taking the circuitous route, hedging my bets… but a book this direct and honest needs a direct and honest review. It’s a masterpiece and will haunt me forever
But not here. It’s brutal and direct and achingly beautiful and deeply, deeply sad. It could be one of the greatest works of art about negotiating grief ever created. In fact it definitely is. I was taking the circuitous route, hedging my bets… but a book this direct and honest needs a direct and honest review. It’s a masterpiece and will haunt me forever
March 24, 2021
shock, loss, grief; derealization, disassociation, existentialism, despair; rebirth, reform?
When two people become one and then one is gone, how and why do you operate as a half?
This reconciliation deals with Nilsen's past, present, and future self, noting the irrelevancy of one or both when another is present. Sure its all there (or will be), but sequence of events doesn't really make sense when an existence of grief is a flatline.
When two people become one and then one is gone, how and why do you operate as a half?
This reconciliation deals with Nilsen's past, present, and future self, noting the irrelevancy of one or both when another is present. Sure its all there (or will be), but sequence of events doesn't really make sense when an existence of grief is a flatline.
August 26, 2024
Don't know if it's unhealthy or just cathartic to seek out stories of spousal/partner grief because I think about something like this happening at least once a week. At any rate Nilsen's sorrowful work here and in Don't Go Where I Can't Follow (a title which either written by Nilsen or spoken in The Lord of the Rings sends a jolt through my heart) is immediate and devastatingly simple. Works like this are like tesseracts, representing something that we can imagine but cannot truly comprehend.
July 7, 2018
I loved the space and sparse pages and the echoing of longing, sadness and tender memories punctuated with the acid of pain and anxiety.
“People complain a lot. People are blessed. We are blessed. I was blessed. Cheryl and I were blessed. But she’s gone now. We are blessed but we are not entitled to our blessings. Everything is a gift, everything is a borrowing.”
“People complain a lot. People are blessed. We are blessed. I was blessed. Cheryl and I were blessed. But she’s gone now. We are blessed but we are not entitled to our blessings. Everything is a gift, everything is a borrowing.”
December 28, 2023
Really very sad, these loosely connected comic vignettes are about what happens when a partner dies and the feelings left behind. It's simple, but powerfully emotional. It's not overwrought, just shows these tender little scenes that demonstrate grief without explaining how it feels. It's impressively done in comics too with little narrative.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews