Why Don't You Love Me?

by Paul B. Rainey

Claire and Mark are in the doldrums of an unhappy marriage. She doesn’t get out of her bathrobe and chain-smokes while slumped on the couch. Mark has lost track of the days and can’t get the kids to school on time. They’ve lost interest in family and have pizza and Chinese food delivered every night. Mark sleeps on the couch and has trouble remembering his son’s name. He feels like a fraud at work but somehow succeeds. Claire stalks an ex-boyfriend. How could he have left her to this life?

Claire and Mark are both plagued by the idea that this is all a dream. Didn’t they have different lives? When reports of an imminent nuclear war come on the radio, the truth begins to dawn on them: This is not the life they chose.

A couple struggles through their unhappy marriage in this dark science-fiction comedy. Why Don’t You Love Me? is a pitch-black comedy about marriage, alcoholism, depression, and mourning lost opportunities. Paul B. Rainey has created a hilariously terrifying alternate reality where confusion and pain might lead people to make bad choices but might also eventually led to freedom... maybe.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Fiction, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comix, British Literature

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 24, 2023

Reviews

[Thomas Edmund · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's hard to give this graphic novel a thorough review without some sort of spoilers! I originally was going to pass it by until I saw a byline from Neil Gaimen...

The story begins as a darkly and disturbing but humorous scenario of a couple who appear to be deep in the throes of mental illness. There is some quite hard hitting material where we see the two main characters mistreat each other, their children and even themselves.

You start to question the path of the book, are we watching the disingatration of a family? Or is the ultimate climax going to be a surprising reveal of how they got to this place?

The eventual reveal, as much as I will say is very surprising and beyond different. I won't say this book will necessarily produce the feelings and emotions that you want it to, but will almost definitely give you material to ponder for a long while.

[Alex Firer]

Sad, Beautiful, Brilliant

First great graphic novel of 2023 indeed. Don't read any spoilers and just dive right in. An image comics series by way of D and Q.

[J. Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an absolute beautiful mindfuck.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 5 out of 5]

Czy kiedykolwiek mieliście to dziwne uczucie, że coś w waszym życiu jest nie tak? Że coś się nie zgadza? Właściwie jak to się stało, że wykonujecie pracę, na której praktycznie się nie znacie i jeszcze osiągacie na tym polu sukces? Skąd macie niektóre umiejętności? Skąd psychiczny dołek, gdy teoretycznie wszystko ułożyło się zgodnie z planem? Jak potoczyłyby się wasze losy, gdybyście dokonali innych wyborów?

„Why dont’ you love me” zaczyna się niewinnie i w tej niewinności trwa przez prawie połowę historii. Satyra na współczesną rodzinę podszyta grozą codzienności. On jest trochę Homerem Simpsonem, trochę Allem Bundy, ona ma depresję i zaniedbuje dzieci. Konwencja amerykańskiego sitcomu z puentującym prawie każdą stronę żartem. Kiedy czytelnik jest już wyraźnie zmęczony formułą, a jednocześnie nieco zaniepokojony czy wytrwa w lekturze, dokonuje się twist na miarę „Od zmierzchu do świtu” - zwrot akcji, wyjście poza schemat, zaskoczenie wyrzucające całość daleko poza ramy gorzkiej obyczajówki. Nie zdradzę w czym rzecz, bo nie chcę psuć zabawy, nadmienię jednak jak fantastycznie Paul B. Rainey przygotowuje czytelnika do wolty, gdy ten jej nawet jeszcze nie przeczuwa. Szczegóły na które nie zwrócisz uwagi, ale zrozumiesz ich znaczenie dopiero gdy całość się domknie. Być może nawet wszystkich ich nie zapamiętasz, więc przyda się ponowna lektura. Trochę jak w prozie Nabokova - detale niepasujące do historii, jakieś drobne sygnały mówiące, że coś tu nie gra, a które uświadomisz sobie dopiero po przeczytaniu porządnego posłowia.

Historia przemyślana w każdym szczególe, co wpływa na siłę jej rażenia. Opowieść wychodząca poza ramy gatunkowe, choć wnioski, jakie z niej płyną są bardzo przyziemne. „Why don’t you love me” mną pozamiatało, więc potwierdzam, że wszystkie tegoroczne peany na jego temat są zasłużone

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I get why this is written the way it is, but it's insufferable and takes forever to get to the payoff. I should've given up a page or two in, but I'm stubborn.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many, many years ago, I had the good fortune to attend a writing seminar held by Kurt Vonnegut. The only thing he said that afternoon that has stuck with me was the following piece of advice: take the first few pages of your story... And throw them away. You will find that these pages are usually needless exposition and engages your reader all the more...

I feel as though Paul Rainey took Kurt's advice, and this graphic novel provides an immediate "what am i reading?" The mystery is compelling enough to keep me reading, even with two main characters so immensely dislikable and broken...

....and then i came upon the following, a line said by a child to a parent:

"...you used to love me but you stopped loving me months and months ago and I don't know why!!

I wish you'd just tell me what I did to stop you loving me so i can make it better and not do it anymore and you can love me again..."

...a line that i was unable to get out of my head until I was able to finish the book the following day... As a parent of young human beings now beginning to understand the feelings of others, and trying (and failing) to understand and control their own, these two panels cut me far, FAR deeper than I could have ever imagined...

...the rest of the story was interesting, it's two main characters becoming only incrementally less dislikable, and taking sharp turn into pseudo-sci-fi explanation territory that I thought distracted from the original approach, in which the reader was only barely able to figure out what was going on, until the very, very end.

[YJ Soon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn’t put it down, and when I was done, had to sit for a while to let it sink in. Highly recommend.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collected like a series of Sunday newspaper strips, drawn in a simple but evocative way and with a story that keeps you hooked until the very last frame.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love reading the occasional graphic novel. It brings me back to those childhood days of reading stacks of comics, though there is nothing funny about most graphic novels, including this one. It's an interesting look at a couple who is experiencing multiverses and themselves as new people in a new relationship with each other and with their children. Weird! But interesting.

[Adam Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

6.5/10 - didn’t really care for the first 2/3rds of this, but the final section was very compelling!

[jp arsenault · Rating 1 out of 5]

nah

[Niall O'neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t read a lot of comic books. This one was confounding for quite a while before it began to reveal itself.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bloody masterpiece! Plot twist after plot twist, little did I expect there would be any sci-fi elements, so much more than just a sad man story. A must read!

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started out super depressing so I put it aside. I’m glad I picked it back up to see the surprising place the story goes.

[Tasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a random purchase! I was looking at graphic novels online and this one caught my eye. A few days later I found myself in an indie bookshop and there were 2 copies of it! It felt like a sign so I had to buy it.

Once I got it home I realised I knew nothing about it and had seen no reviews for it. With a high price tag I was really hoping it would turn out to be good!

It was! So good! It starts off as a kind of observational comic about a depressed, stressed out family who don't really do a lot and neglect their children. It did have a strange vibe to it and I felt like it was building up to something but couldn't figure out what.

Enter the twist.

And then the book takes this thought provoking sci-fi turn and becomes even more interesting. I really enjoyed reading it.

I can't say too much more because I would hate to spoil anything but this is certainly a unique story and one I thoroughly enjoyed. It has tons of reread value as well, I already can't wait to read it again!

I think graphic novels are becoming my thing now, the more I read, the more I want!

[Salty Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

What starts off as a nightmare marriage from hell story ends up in a twisted dimension that appears seemingly from nowhere. Claire and Mark are a highly dysfunctional couple. While she doesn't leave the house, neglects her husband and offspring, he gets a new job and instantly succeeds in a role he has zero knowledge of. The deeper you dig into their toxic relationship, the screwier their interactions and world around them become. To say this is a graphic novel that will literally blow your mind is an understatement. An instant classic!

[Ilana Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upsetting but thought provoking.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

Claire and Mark are locked in a loveless marriage along with two kids neither like, let alone love. Claire is clinically depressed, spending her days drinking wine on the couch in her bathrobe while Mark, also depressed but whose sick leave has expired, works a job he has no idea how to do. Then cracks start appearing as they begin to look at their situation. How did they ever become a couple? Why don’t they care about their children? Why does Mark think he works in another profession? All isn’t what it seems…

I’m gonna be very careful in reviewing this one because literally halfway through the book there’s a dramatic switch and the story you thought you were reading goes in a completely unexpected direction. So Paul B. Rainey’s Why Don’t You Love Me? is really a book of two halves and, though I liked that Rainey did something ambitious like that at the midway point, the explanation for it wasn’t nearly as original and the content of the second half wasn’t as good as the first.

The first half is a slice-of-life story about dead marriages, bad parenting and depression. It’s brutal to see how awful both Claire and Mark are to their two young children and yet you also don’t hate either of them, mainly because they’re occasionally quite funny in their dark ways. I enjoy characters who are such complete bastards and these two are so over-the-top terrible parents that what they say and do is undeniably amusing.

The book is presented as a series of one-page strips with the title and author credits at the start of each page, adding to the sense that we’re reading a newspaper gag strip, though they flow together well into a clear narrative. It’s interesting that nobody actually voices the title question - why don’t you love me? - despite it being an underlying question for nearly all of the characters.

Rainey drops subtle hints throughout this first half in preparation for the revelations of the second half which kept me interested to find out what exactly was meant by them. Like why Mark keeps failing to remember his son’s name is Charley and not Tommy, or why he seems to think he’s a barber instead of the website manager that he seems to be. There’s also a catastrophic event that affects everyone around them but they choose to ignore it for some reason and, because we’re reading the story from their perspective, by extension we’re kept in the dark as to what this event was, until we find out later on, as well as to why Mark and Claire refuse to acknowledge it.

That said, their antics start to get a tad repetitive after 100 or so pages so I was glad for the gear shift. After that happens though, there isn’t much to the second half. Without going into spoilers, I wasn’t that taken with either character’s storyline and the explanation for it all was really flat and unremarkable - disappointingly so. It’s the kind of rubbish you’d expect to see Marvel or DC trot out (and they do, frequently, in all their media), it’s so hackneyed.

I enjoyed the first half of the book a lot more than the second. The humour is reminiscent of Dan Clowes’ Wilson and Simon Hanselmann’s Megg and Mogg comics, so if you enjoyed those, you’ll probably get something out of this book. I appreciated the midway point razzle-dazzle but the second half didn’t live up to the switcheroo and it’s all downhill after that. Still, Why Don’t You Love Me? is an intriguing, sometimes entertaining, and surprising indie comic that I’d say is one of the year’s comics highlights and worth checking out.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially presented as a series of dour comic strips featuring the dysfunctional nuclear family unit of Mark, Claire, Charley and Sally, Paul B. Rainey's Why Don't You Love Me? turns into something highly ambitious conceptually and thoughtful. Each page in this book tends to be a fresh new strip, but there is an overarching narrative that quickly develops across each strip. The humor is pretty dark at times since it involves heavier ideas like depression, alcoholism, child abuse and more, but Rainey's script is brimming with dry wit that does a suitable job balancing things out so that it doesn't come off as callous. The artwork in here is quite minimalistic with Rainey leaning towards using simple, bold lines to fill the landscape compositions. Rainey even wields this simplicity of the artwork to lend towards the often austere tone of the story. Like many comic strips, there is a set layout that the cartoonist adheres to and Rainey pulls it off really well here. Strips can be tough to read as a binge due to the tedium of reading a repeating story structure, but the story is engaging enough to keep things moving alone. While I did feel like there is a bit of bloat to this book, it ultimately didn't really affect my overall highly positive feelings about this. I'm usually one to dig a little into the books I'm about to read before I start, but jumping into this rather blind made for one of the most memorable reading experiences I've had of late. Highly recommend going into this one with a leap of faith.

The general story in Why Don't You Love Me? is about the terrible parenting done by Mark and Claire. At the onset of this book, it reads like a little like a repeated joke about how neglectful they are as parents, and at times teetering on the precipice of child abuse. Mark is lethargic and nebbish individual, focused on doing the bare minimum at work and even less when he comes home from work. Claire is clinically depressed and spends her days drinking and neglecting housework. The two live a loveless marriage with even less regard for their two children, who are mostly presented as precocious and ultimately the victims of Mark and Claire's indifference. While characters in strips tend to be static, Rainey soon begins to craftily weave in some cracks to his characterizations of Mark and Claire and show that there is definitely more to them. It's at the half way point of this book that it takes on one of the wildest turns I've ever encountered in the medium - and the less that is known about this, the better the impact. Genre-bending is difficult to pull off, but Rainey's approach is delightfully understated and subversive in a way that is simply awe inspiring.

Needless to say, I adored Why Don't You Love Me?. While it's not the most visually captivating book, Rainey capably harnesses the strip format to weave a haunting portrait of the tedium and isolation of modern life but also presents the tenderness that lies only a little deeper under the surface.

[Bonnie McDaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the sort of graphic novel I've been reading lately. The art is black and white, and it's presented in more of a newspaper (or possibly web comic) format, a bit more episodic in feel instead of a single overarching story. And yet the single overarching story is just what it contains. The genius of the writer is that his story sneaks up on you gradually, until the defining plot twist halfway through that makes you look back on the first panels in an entirely different way.

Still, there is more than enough weirdness in the beginning to keep the reader's attention, and the characters carried me past the simplicity of the art. Our protagonists are Mark and Claire Hopkins and their children Sally and Charley (although Mark keeps calling his son "Tommy," the first tipoff that something is off kilter). Claire is suffering from what appears to be clinical depression--at the beginning, she sits around the house all day, refusing to go outside, demanding Mark and/or one of the kids go every day to fetch her wine and cigarettes and asking the kids to bring her food. Mark has taken off work to help, and in fact is rather reluctant to return to the office, as he insists he should have been a barber instead of a website manager (the second hint that something is wrong). The first half of the story is taken up with this domestic drama, with Mark and Claire clashing over her illness, his job, and the kids. In fact, the reader (or at least this reader) starts to question the whole point of this story.....until the mid-book plot twist hits and everything changes.

From there, the story tackles issues of identity, free will, family ties, the choices we make and the roads not taken. Everything about our characters and their lives is retextualized with this new information. It's masterfully done, and the ending is at the same time hopeful and more than a little depressing--because you realize what has happened to Mark and Claire twice already is probably going to keep happening again and again.

I haven't read another graphic novel quite like it. The only reason I didn't give this five stars is because the art isn't that great. (I mean, would it have killed the author to include a few splashes of color?) But the characters and story were more than enough to carry me along. This is about as far from the Marvel and DC universe that a graphic novel can get, and that is a good thing. I don't think the big comics imprints would have taken a chance on a subversive, genre-bending story like this, and I'm very glad it's in the world.

[Titus · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first this just seems to be a black comedy about a highly dysfunctional family, featuring a father who's incompetent and distant and a mother who's outright negligent and emotionally abusive. The format imitates a series of one-page newspaper strips, and each page finishes with a punchline that’s basically just an instance of terrible parenting. That honestly isn't a premise that appeals to me much, and I can’t say the punchlines in those early pages are especially funny, but after a few pages the comic nonetheless managed to grip my interest with hints that something more is going on below its surface – at first with suggestions that the mother has a serious mental illness, then with the revelation of something altogether more unusual.

The comic soon had its hooks in me, and I found myself eagerly reading on, fascinated by the characters and their lives, and intrigued by the high-concept mystery emerging at the comic’s core. Although formatted like one-page strips throughout, it soon becomes apparent that this isn’t just a series of standalone humour strips; there’s a real overarching plot, with events developing chronologically from one page to the next. Indeed, after a while it lays off the punchline-driven rhythm, instead just using each page as a scene from the characters’ lives, moving the story onwards through a series of vignettes.

Brilliantly, as the comic progresses, the two protagonists grow from caricatures of bad parents into a complex, believable and eminently relatable everyman and everywoman. As such, the comic ingeniously raises big questions about life and identity – about where the core of a person’s character is located, about whether people shape their lives or are shaped by them, about how chance circumstances and small decisions can have enormous repercussions, and about how we’re all ultimately at the mercy of global events far beyond our control.

Overall, then, this is an excellent comic that I highly recommend. The cartooning is unspectacular, but it's perfectly competent, and in any case I was so absorbed in the story that I didn’t need showy visuals.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why Don't You Love Me? is a British comic strip about a dysfunctional couple with two children. The father, Mark, can’t remember his children’s names or ages, and his wife, Claire, usually can’t remember his name. The children, Charley and Sally, have names that reference Peanuts as does Mark’s training as a barber, although he currently is on medical leave as website developer, a career he often says he has no idea how to do.

Claire is an unemployed, chain-smoking, depressive alcoholic who spends most of her days dressed in her robe sitting on the couch doing nothing. Charley and Sally are left on their own with little to no oversight, utterly neglected by both parents, neither of whom is willing to cook and neither of whom know what day it is and whether the kids should be in school. Mark spends his days at a computer—doing what is anybody’s guess—and Charley remains glued to his X-Box around the clock. In other words, Why Don't You Love Me? has all the ingredients of pure comedy gold.

Parental neglect, self-absorption, and lies form the fabric of the family dynamics, and mom and dad’s days of intimacy ended long ago, each sleeping in separate rooms: Mom in the bedroom, dad on the living room couch—unless Claire has passed out drunk there, in which case, Mark kicks Charley out of his bedroom to sleep on the couch with Claire. And Sally? She’s around somewhere, making her presence known when necessary.

Here's some dialogue from the opening two strips:

Charley: Mummy! Mummy! Can we go to school today?
Claire: Jesus. . . Why are you asking me for? How should I know?
Mark: Thomas. . . Tommy. . . Tom. . . Whatever your name is. . . Go and put your uniform on. I’ll take you.
Sally: Where is our uniforms?
Mark: I don’t know. Wherever you left it. Scattered across your bedroom floor?
Sally: But it’s dirty!
Mark: Look, do you want to go to school or don’t you? [To Claire, who’s just lit a cigarette:] Um. . . Do you think you should be doing that indoors? You know. . . Passive smoking and all that?
Claire: Christ! You mean this all might be real? [Stubs out cigarette.] There! Happy now?

Claire: [To Charley:] Who the hell is this kid?
Charley: It’s my friend, Mum. Remember?
Claire: Thank God! For a moment, I thought there was another one! [To Mark sitting at the computer:] Still pretending you can’t remember the password eh?
Mark: How many times do I have to tell you? F’god’s sake!
Claire: What about the kids’ names?
Mark: Good idea. [Types.] T. . . O. . .
Claire: Charley! His name is Charley!
Mark: Right, right, of course. Does that end E. . . Y. . . or I. . . E. . . ? No matter, I’ll try both. Nope. Nope. I’ll try “Charles.” Nope. S. . . A. . . double L. . . Y. . . Nope. What’s “Sally” short for?
Claire: It’s not short for anything, you idiot! It’s just “Sally”!

If the black humor about a dysfunctional couple were all that this book were about—the zingers, the lies, disappointments, and emotional manipulations—that would all be fine in its cynical, nihilistic way. But Rainey is doing something else here that takes Why Don’t You Love Me? past what it seems to be—a daily or weekly comic strip about domestic life a la “Andy Capp” minus the wife-beating—and reveals Rainey merely to be using the tropes of comic strips as a red herring. Instead, he explores other possibilities latent within the graphic narrative format that make it far more interesting than conventional strips in what it has to say about friendship, love, relationships, and commitments over time and place, using speculative fiction and facts about quantum physics to frame aspects of the human condition.

Just as the extramarital peccadillos of Mark and Claire seem to be catching up to them, the narrative seems to start over again—only this time, Mark is working as a barber and Claire lives with another man she likes (although he seems to barely tolerate her) and is gainfully employed, to boot. Charley and Sally are nowhere to be seen and are not even alluded to. Is this a flashback to before the time Mark and Claire met? Or are we suddenly several years in the future and are waiting for Rainey to get around to explain what happened in between?

Neither, as it turns out. Why Don’t You Love Me? explores the possibilities of the “comic book” format in a way I haven’t felt since Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan came out, and shows Rainey to be an ingenious writer of significant empathic depths.

For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...

[Cozyblanketandabook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book started out and it was not at all what I expected. A very dark story about a family dealing with mental illness shown in a way you don’t often see. The mother is atrocious to the children and the way both parents behave is neglectful bordering on abuse.

As the story goes on the characters begin to evolve and grow in a compelling way; at this point the story takes another jump I did not see coming at all. Looking back now there are clues but it was quite the shock to me when this switch up happens.

I didn’t expect how existential this graphic novel would become. I really was so taken with the characters and their plights. There was an emotional depth to the story which helped me really involved and invested in the outcome.

I can’t say I would want to read this again but I’m glad I read this. I heard it’s going to be adapted into an A24 movie with Jennifer Lawrence. I think she will make a great Claire and I’m curious to how they will handle the adaptation.

[Colin Murtagh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember reading this as it was released weekly, but seeing it here, all in one place, makes the impact so much more.
This is a really difficult book to talk about, because there is a massive twist around half way through that the entire book hangs on, and is what gives it the true meaning of the book.
We start with the original dysfunctional family. Claire and Mark are a couple you can't imagine ever getting together. So dysfunctional Mark sleeps in the living room, Claire spends her days in an alcoholic haze, and the two kids are to all intents and purposes ignored. Even to the stage that Mark can't remember their names. It feels like a bleak kitchen sink drama. Looking at self destruction, what family life means, and connections.
When it's finished, you look at it with different eyes, and realise this is not as simple as it all first looked.
It's still bleak, but there's hidden depths in there.
This is a beautiful dark morality tale.

[Peter Hollo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this book really was surprising, and I'm so glad that a couple of people whose opinions I really respect spoke highly of it. I'd looked at it on the shelves and decided it was another misanthropic or sad-arse story that I didn't need to read. I was wrong.

I knew there was a twist or two, and so when I started reading I thought I had the measure of it. But it really does twist - wrench you, really - away from what it seemed to be saying, halfway through.
As far as the sci-fi aspect of the plot goes, I did appreciate that Rainey carefully paced it so that the reveal only came in the last few pages. But the emotional arc was what's really special about this book: seeing these characters grow, but also seeing them from another angle.
The surprising thing, in the end, is that there's a real beauty to the narrative as it comes to a close.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find this hard to evaluate. I went into the story knowing that it was science fiction, and so I was attuned to the idea that everything might not be as it seemed.

I can see a reading in which this comic takes its time to build up the horror of the situation, but in practice I ended up just feeling that the comic was aimless, and although I’ve read many webcomics and newspaper comics that felt aimless I’m not sure the best examples of the form do. I wasn’t sure what Rainey wanted me to feel about the two central characters; they both seem like absolutely awful people. By the end of the book Rainey seems to be trying to make you empathise with them, but I found that attempt unconvincing. Equally, I found the revelation of what’s going on to be rather unfulfilling, and the combination of the change in direction and the unsatisfying twist meant I felt the book came to an end with a whimper rather than a bang.

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A review I read of this graphic novel worried that readers might give up on it before they figured out what was going on. I almost did. For too long a time, the author tells the story of a wife, a husband, and their two kids. We know something's not right--the wife seems to be clinically depressed, but the husband has his problems too, like forgetting the name of his son. For almost half of the book, this story plays out, tediously and repetitively, and just as I was ready to give up, something happens. At the time, you're not quite sure what, but it does sort of reboot everything and keeps you on your toes, though ultimately, I'm not sure it was worth reading all the way through. This would have been a better read at about half its length.

[Alison Scott]

Impossible to review this without spoilerage, even so far as to say the sort of awards that it is being tipped for. It’s a slice of life story about two people who are in an absolutely ghastly relationship, told through the medium of the sort of full page comics that used to appear on the Guardian’s women’s page (and indeed, the Guardian liked it very much). So we are not expecting every page to have a zinger of a punchline, but even so, it starts off seeming impossibly bleak and distressing. Of course, there is more going on than you realise at first, and the story unfolds as you read on. Eventually, the couple’s behaviour in the early panels is explained. Does anything become less bleak and more optimistic? Not really. Very much worth your time, even so.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neil Gaiman says it best on the back of my edition:

“When I began to read Why Don’t You Love Me? I thought it read like any number of slightly surrealistic slightly vapid early-2000s stories that were basically the cartoonist’s way of telling you they hated everyone and everything. And then it came into focus and it wasn’t that thing at all. And then it came into focus again, uplifting and heartbreaking and (a word that I use sparingly) relevant. The kind of story leading to a last panel that’s all pain and job and delivers the whole thing. What a masterwork. To understand all is to forgive all.”

As others have noted, don't read any summaries or spoilers on this -- just read it if the cover and a quick flip attract you.

4.6 Stars

[Izzy Pilares · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I don’t think it’s a book that many people will enjoy reading, I’m a sucker for experimental fiction, and experimental this certainly was! I think the book would have benefited from a significant change in pace, particularly in the first half since so much of it is just dreary, though I will say that it had me laugh out loud a few times just because of how ridiculous Claire and Mark are acting while married to each other. Ultimately though, the reason I enjoyed this book so much was due to the author’s message about empathy. Claire’s journey from the beginning to the end really proves just how impactful kindness can be not only to others but to yourself.