Net doen alsof is ook liegen

by Dominique Goblet, Ernst van den Hemel (Translator)

Je kan houden van iemand die het niet lijkt te verdienen. ‘Ik had tegelijkertijd de liefste en de slechtste moeder die je je kunt voorstellen. Dat ambigue vind ik interessant,’ vertelt Dominique Goblet in een interview met de Volkskrant. De Waalse auteur werkt in het autobiografische Net doen alsof is ook liegen op pijnlijk liefdevolle wijze de tegenstrijdige kanten van menselijke relaties uit. Zo wordt in dit beeldverhaal de problematische verhouding van de hoofdpersoon met haar kleurrijke vader prachtig gepresenteerd: zijn liederlijk taalgebruik en charmante verzinsels gaan naadloos over in egoïsme en alcoholisme. De hoofdpersoon in dit verhaal beweegt zich constant tussen mensen van wie ze houdt maar die haar tegelijkertijd diep kwetsen.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Memoir, Nonfiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Bande Dessinée, France

Hardcover

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Dominique Goblet is a Belgian visual artist, illustrator and pioneer of the European graphic novel. She lives and works in Brussels. Her work can be defined as experimental, varied in style, poetic and often biographical.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Can we tell the truth?" Goblet asks. "Can we ever not?"

Here’s some images from the book:

https://www.google.com/search?q=domin...

Pretending is Lying is the first book to appear in English by Belgian artist Goblet. It’s really haunting and memorable, a postmodern memoir she took twelve years to piece together, with a range of styles, sometimes just single images representing whole periods, sometimes ghost-like images fading on the page that are like the ever-presence of memory. There’s so much texture to it that it feels rough, honest, not some polished production.

Mostly pencil drawings, some with a little color, some with splashes of more. It’s as many memoirs are about, relationships with: her partner, Guy Marc; her daughter, Nikita, and her parents, especially her (drunk, pathological liar, lunatic) Dad. So that aspect of it is unsurprising, maybe. You write a memoir about family and friends.

The surprising part of it is the approach, the technique, that feels raw and real. There’s childhood trauma (and a couple images are a little bit disturbing, pretty unforgettable), and there’s complicated love (what isn’t, right?) in all of it. She’s not vicious about any of these memories; she’s vulnerable, she’s forgiving, she exudes warmth. I have the feeling I would be less forgiving than she is about practically everything she relates. There are funny moments, too, with her daughter for instance. Maybe there’s a touch of black comedy about some of it.

Pretending is Lying is not a coherent narrative, and it’s also not that long; it’s more anecdotes and glimpses and snippets, it’s a way of telling through fragments, images in memory. And in the process you get this feeling that she has told us her truth, which is all we can ask of her, maybe. So interesting, this memoir, and I want more translated from her now!

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Can we tell the truth?" Goblet asks. "Can we ever not?"

Here’s some images from the book:

https://www.google.com/search?q=domin...

Pretending is Lying is the first book to appear in English by Belgian artist Goblet. It’s really haunting and memorable, a postmodern memoir she took twelve years to piece together, with a range of styles, sometimes just single images representing whole periods, sometimes ghost-like images fading on the page that are like the ever-presence of memory. There’s so much texture to it that it feels rough, honest, not some polished production.

Mostly pencil drawings, some with a little color, some with splashes of more. It’s as many memoirs are about, relationships with: her partner, Guy Marc; her daughter, Nikita, and her parents, especially her (drunk, pathological liar, lunatic) Dad. So that aspect of it is unsurprising, maybe. You write a memoir about family and friends.

The surprising part of it is the approach, the technique, that feels raw and real. There’s childhood trauma (and a couple images are a little bit disturbing, pretty unforgettable), and there’s complicated love (what isn’t, right?) in all of it. She’s not vicious about any of these memories; she’s vulnerable, she’s forgiving, she exudes warmth. I have the feeling I would be less forgiving than she is about practically everything she relates. There are funny moments, too, with her daughter for instance. Maybe there’s a touch of black comedy about some of it.

Pretending is Lying is not a coherent narrative, and it’s also not that long; it’s more anecdotes and glimpses and snippets, it’s a way of telling through fragments, images in memory. And in the process you get this feeling that she has told us her truth, which is all we can ask of her, maybe. So interesting, this memoir, and I want more translated from her now!

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once every few years - no more than that - I come across a graphic novel that rearranges my idea of what comics can do. Dominique Goblet's off-the-wall memoir is one of those books. Her way of telling her story, like her way of drawing and (incredibly) her way of lettering her panels, captivated me from the beginning. Each panel is a construction, a tiny world of registered impression or darkest memory, allowing what James Hillman called "imaginal" realities to appear as a kind of palimpsest. I dived into the book, read it one concentrated sitting, and have just re-emerged into the ordinary light of a Sunday afternoon. The final pages are a coup de théâtre, a complete triumph of the peculiar art Goblet has made her own.

I haven't enjoyed a graphic novel this much since Jason Lutes' Jar of Fools, Seth's It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken: A Picture Novella, or Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.

[Maggie Gordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretending is Lying is very atmospheric, but ultimately not very satisfying. It is a memoir told in vignettes, all focused on the author's relationship with her parents, daughter, and lover. Most of these moments are traumatic, but there is not cathartic release. It is simply a series of moments in time. I know that memoirs are not as neatly tied up into bows as fictional stories, but I do like some sort of culmination or natural ending point. Also, I really really REALLY hated her lover. He was the worst D:

[Travis Duke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Raw and emotional but ultimately too fragmented and disjointed for me. Dominique recalls emotional times in her life with her father, lover, and child. I appreciate her vision but i feel like it could of been refined in story and art just a bit more. The stories are loosely connected that all revolve around her feelings of love and family and trying to understand her relationships. The beginning is clunky but as you read on it shapes a pattern that makes more sense, sort of. Personally speaking the art is rushed and crude and really not appealing it lends to the stories but it could of been much better. The text is terrible, i don't care if it conveys her emotions its just sloppy. There isn't much of an ending and it not very satisfying.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became interested in the graphic-memoir genre earlier this year, after Thi Bui's masterpiece The Best We Could Do emotionally slaughtered me and left me cathartically drained. I've been a devotee of NYRB's literary-fiction offerings for years, but I'd never heard of their comics imprint, or of Belgian author/artist Dominique Goblet, until I spied a friend's review of Pretending Is Lying here on Goodreads. In our world in which immaculately post-processed, computer-aided drawing seems ubiquitous, Goblet's graphic memoir stands out partly due to its raw, hand-drawn feel. The text is all handwritten: Goblet gives different characters different voices and moods by varying between semi-neat printed letters and a sloppy cursive that channels a second-grader's. Her drawings sometimes evoke a young child's, with scribbly, smudgy lines and unrealistic, elongated proportions, and this is perfect for the story Goblet wants to tell, about a single mother who still feels like a child herself due to her foundering love life and her unresolved emotions toward her overburdened irascible mom and alcoholic absentee dad. Dreamlike, the narrative drifts among vividly realized scenes remembered from different eras of the protagonist's life, challenging readers to rethink what honesty means: Can lovers ever be truly honest? What about parents? And what about memoirists, whose fallible memories and prickly egos are always playing tricks on them? Can our understanding of our own stories ever be more than a gauzy, self-protective fiction?

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the greatest graphic novels (memoirs) ever. Matthias Wivel's review of the work, in which he selected as one of the greatest comics of the decade, is well written. http://www.metabunker.dk/?p=3000

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and fragmentary.

As the back cover promises, Goblet examines the most important relationships in her life: with her daughter, her parents, and her partner, Guy Marc. Events aren't covered in a linear fashion. Goblet jumps around, crafting a series of telling vignettes that reveal character without preaching about it. The artwork is gorgeous, displaying a wide range of techniques and with a lovely handmade collage feel to it. The book doesn't end so much as evaporate like mist before the rising sun.

Special kudos to the translation team, because it can't have been easy to redraw all of the dialogue in English and have it integrate so seamlessly with the original artwork. It all seems to be hand-drawn lettering, so it's not simply a matter of selecting the proper font.

[Sharlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This atmospheric, moody graphic memoir is full of beautiful and emotional illustrations that tells of a dysfunctional family. The illustrations feel very organic, in a way, the colors bleed into one another, the text is handwritten in different styles, the colors are muted and sepia-toned. For me, the storyline was a bit hard to follow in parts, a bit disjointed but still haunting. Goblet is a Belgian visual artist and I happened to come across this graphic memoir while browsing the ebook catalogue. I hadn’t heard of her before and after looking her up, learnt that she has quite a few graphic novels but it doesn’t look like any others have been translated into English. Pretending is Lying was published by @nyrcomics in 2016. Hopefully they will publish her other books?

[Gavin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Messy, mildly impressive. She switches between half a dozen styles (crayon, smudged charcoal, heavy pencil, what looks like felt tip with most of the panel untouched, simulating intense white light, scraped acrylic abstract landscapes) with no clear meaning. There are ghosts everywhere (the people you remember, the ones you wish were here). Everyone is bitter, dishonest, haranguing except the wee girl. Also melodrama, but bad luck in love does that to people. Niki’s tiny beaming gestures are the best bit. The weird shuffling makes it seem like a diary - you don’t need to introduce anyone in your diary or mention them more than once or for more than 3 panels. But then it’s a memoir where you also show your cheating lover with his ex while you’re still back at home, and don’t make much effort to sketch his inner life and show him telling you lies you can’t disprove…

(The lover is thanked in the Acknowledgments, so maybe they’re just radically open about their vices with each other, and explain their deceptions. This would be an odd pairing of vice and virtue: vicious enough to cheat and manipulate and lie, secure and honourable enough to admit it and accept your own shit)

She doesn’t spare herself much - shown lovelorn and ineffectual, a dupe who finishes the book falling for more of GM’s lies.

Overall it leaves a mucky feeling, and besides the style switching there’s not much to set it above your average experimental indie bit.

[Liza · Rating 4 out of 5]

с каждым новым комиксом мне все интереснее переплетение формы и содержания и все сильнее хочется писать свое. тут — жирный карандаш, и этим определяется как будто бы Всё.

[Matthew Peters · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty amateurish, scattered story, etc… graphic novels are the anime of books. Fuck the person that gave me this

[Angelise · Rating 4 out of 5]

quick read that packs a punch! i recommend to all of u

[Elizabeth A · Rating 2 out of 5]

This graphic memoir is translated from the Belgian by Sophie Yanow.

If you know me you know I have issues with memoirs in general, and yet I keep picking them up, go figure.

The author recounts events of her life pertaining to her father, lover, and daughter, and what I did like about the telling is how episodic these events seem to be. That's exactly how we remember things. Memory is not like a film that plays, but is more like tuning into a channel. Sometimes we get a clear sharp image, other times simply static. While that really makes sense to the person with the memories, it's rather a disjointed experience for me the reader. I get (I think) what she was going for, but something seemed lost in translation to me. You know that experience when you are trying to describe a really vivid dream to someone, and you cannot convey how it felt? Reading this book felt like that. I'm not a fan of the art style either, pencil with some color, and there were panels I puzzled over trying to understand what was being conveyed with the strange figures and positions. There are people who love it, but there was something lost in translation for me.

[Billie Tyrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels very personal and the art and text (once you get to used to them) fuse together into something very scratchy and expressive, but then will morph into something more soft... all depending on the actual emotions being conveyed from page to page. It covers the relationship between the writer and her father, and also her distant boyfriend who she's in something of a rebound relationship with. There's some stuff about ghosts in there, though not literal ghosts but more the ghosts of trauma that follow us around. Worth checking out, this is definitely one of the graphic novels I've read this year that I might actually buy a physical copy of.

[Felicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I read the NY Times review of this book and immediately ordered it. It is absolutely amazing, from the artwork to the story to the layout. This is a great method for telling a memoir. Like the artistic style of the book, it's a many layered story of this women's dysfunctional family. We all can relate to that, right? How many of us have sat with our mouth agape listening to a family member recount their skewed version of a shared history? There are parts of this that will make your blood boil and parts that will make you sad, but there is grim beauty in all of it.

[Nore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I may have rated this higher had Goblet chosen to focus on her relationship with her family, and left out the frankly uninteresting bit about her lover. I have no sympathy for those who cheat and then lie about it. Her relationship with her father felt similar to mine with my mother - push and pull, love and anger, wanting them to understand how they hurt you but knowing that bringing it up will result in the sort of argument that ruins the rest of the day.

Not world-changing, and the art didn't do it for me personally, but a decent read.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary, beautiful, and sad graphic novel... in the growing but still relatively short list of graphic novels I've read, this one felt most revolutionary and creative in terms of how it took advantage of its form, stretching the limits of how it communicated time and point-of-view and mood through shifting visual styles.

[anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially I got caught up in trying to fit the pieces of this together. After I relaxed and just read to read it and let it all settle it was better. I’m certain I didn’t understand everything I should have, but I did absorb the raw, fragmented sense of this memoir.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tytuł - „Pretending is Lying” – świetnie definiuje główną myśl komiksu uznanej belgijskiej autorki, wydanego dwa lata temu przez „New York Review Comics”. Kilka scen z życia artystki i momentów (niekoniecznie ułożonych chronologicznie) uchwyconych w trzech rozdziałach, odnosi się do użytej sentencji na przynajmniej na dwóch płaszczyznach: relacji rodzinnych i miłosnego związku.

„Pretending is Lying” to słowa, którymi macocha Dominique zwraca się do jej córki, gdy ta wymyśla cechy rysowanej właśnie postaci. Słowa niosące w sobie karcący przekaz stają się mottem całości, kumulującej traumy i będącej dla autorki katalizatorem służącym przepracowaniu bolesnych tematów. Począwszy od trudnych relacji z ojcem, który nadużywał alkoholu, a po latach wyrządzonych krzywd, stara się desperacko wybielić i przedstawić w roli ofiary, przez stosunki z matką, traumatyzującą córkę okrutnymi metodami wychowania, skończywszy na pozostawaniu w nieszczerym związku, którego tło stanowi tęsknota za prawdziwą miłością Guya - obecnego partnera bohaterki.

Całość nie miałaby takiej siły rażenia, gdyby nie forma. Goblet umiejętnie urozmaica swoje grafiki. Chaotyczne i nerwowe spotkanie z pijanym ojcem obrazuje niemal dziecięca kreska, postacie są zniekształcone i karykaturalne. Plakatowe barwy wymykają się poza kontury, a dodatkowo zachwyca liternictwo - u pijanego celowo koślawe i nieskładne. Kolejny rozdział ma bardziej szkicowy i poukładany charakter. Oniryzm związany z postacią ducha, podążającego za Guyem, intensyfikuje kilka metaforycznych kadrów. Dużo tu odcieni szarości, cieniowania, przez co całość zyskuje więcej wymiarów. Bardziej poukładanej narracji towarzyszy konstatacja, że również związek to udawanie i wzajemne oszukiwanie, które nieuchronnie prowadzą do jego końca. Stylistyczne rozchwianie staje się metodą organizującą całość i stanowi wartość samą w sobie.

Świetne zabiegi zdobiące narrację, kapitalnie ją urozmaicają, odzwierciedlając jednocześnie stany psychiczne bohaterów i emocje nimi targające . Gdy Dominique ma migrenę, widać kompletny chaos w kadrach; do pokazania obezwładniającej siły prawdziwej miłości Guya, użyto jego postaci oplecionej przez ducha siedzącego przy biurku; apodyktyczny i agresywny ojciec, ustawiany w centrum domowego życia, zaprezentowany jest jako parodia średniowiecznej ikony.

To nie jest po prostu kolejny komiksowy memuar, ale mocno psychologiczny portret wzajemnych stosunków, w których prawie każdy udaje kogoś kim nie jest, próbując jednocześnie odczarować i wybielać przeszłość, koloryzować teraźniejszość i na fałszywych przesłankach projektować przyszłość. Większość tych procesów ma najprawdopodobniej nieuświadomiony charakter. O paradoksach całości relacji pokazanych w „Pretending is Lying” świadczy zmieniający się wizerunek ojca, gdy z byłego oprawcy staje się pocieszycielem i jedyną ostoją córki. Wydaje się, że ta ucieczka przed jednowymiarowością jest największą siłą tego komiksu.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is this my first book by a Belgian author? It might be, actually. One of the stranger graphic novels I’ve read lately. Definitely far away from a traditional fare, but then again is there such a thing as traditional fare anymore. I used to associate the genre as something closest to comic books, but seems a more accurate definition would just be of a novel told in a graphic form.
This novel in graphic form appears to be something of a stylized (and possibly somewhat fictionalized, more on this later) memoir that deals with the author’s relationships, mostly with the men in her life, her estranged drunken self pitying oaf of a father and her lovelorn perpetually undecided wishy-washy boyfriend. There is no set chronology or style, the latter of which is especially interesting. In fact, the first chapter is told in such weirdly primitive art that it didn’t really work for me at all, and then suddenly it improved so fast and so dramatically, it was almost disorienting, like something you’d expect out of a collaboration not a single artist. Suddenly, there were complex elaborate portraiture and shading and very clever use of negative space and original stylistic choices. And the rest of the book essentially varied, depending on who the story dealt with.
The author’s boyfriend provided an afterword stating that the reader should approach the characters in the book not as real people but as avatars of real people. Then again his representation in the novel was unflattering enough that he would have to say something like that. At any rate, it was quick enough of a read (maybe 50/55 minutes) and artistically interesting enough of a book to check out, for free, from the library. Definitely an art over story selection.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was a masterpiece, even when I didn't always enjoy reading it. The artistic styles alone are fascinating, and I appreciated how the author was able to create perceptions from different stages of life (childhood vs adulthood, how the father changed and was illustrated, the mother's perspective, the main character's own daughter). It's quite intense. Some of the other New York Review Comics haven't resonated with me, so I'm glad I could appreciate this one.

[Anastasiia Mozghova · Rating 4 out of 5]

кажется, графический роман - идеальный формат для изображения ярких вспышек и болезненных обрывков наших воспоминаний. тут - несчастное детство, сложные отношения с возлюбленным, материнство в одиночестве. грустно, горько.

[Nick Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece.

Goblet is working so many different levels with this thoughtful and experimental approach to autobiography that is unique to comics. This seminal book asks engaged readers to both contemplate and feel the emotional experiences of this honest self-aware retelling of her memories and experiences as a child, as a woman, as a mother, and as a daughter. Though pain is omnipresent, how Goblet chooses to conclude her narrative is incredibly moving in a manner that also works as a summation of the myriad artistic decisions that are deployed throughout the book.

[Kiersten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful artwork but that was about it for me.

[Derek Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for the podcast, our Euro Comics series. I like this book quite a bit, and this was my first exposure to Goblet. I feel that I should have encountered her work before. There's a lot of potential, here, when it comes to framing and defining autobiography.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tomuto komiksu síce úplne nerozumiem, ale i tak sa mi páči :D
Solídne 3 hviezdičky si určite zalúži ;)

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and strange and very nonlinear, this story moves and shifts around in ways that sometimes make it hard to determine the connection between times and people but ultimately it's well worth it.

[Barbara McEwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the artwork in this. It is so expressive.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The drawing in Dominique Goblet’s cartoon memoir PRETENDING IS LYING look as if they were chiseled into the page. Her style changes subtly throughout the episodic story of her abusive father and uncommitted boyfriend. It’s a great read, but the artwork is what pulled me through page after page. It reminded me of reading Mark Marek’s NEW WAVE COMICS and HERCULES AMONGST THE NORTH AMERICANS when I was in art school, I couldn’t believe you could do that is comics — and this is after I’d already seen everyone from Jack Kirby to Robert Crumb. Goblet has that same liberating creativity. She makes me want to pick up my materials and rub them into a beautiful mush.