Review by Booklist Review
In some ways an extension of her acclaimed graphic novel debut, Imagine Wanting Only This (2017), which explored ideas of decay and its aftermath, Radtke's second work of wide-ranging, visual nonfiction storytelling examines isolation as a social, biological, and personal phenomenon. The hard-to-define concept of loneliness, Radtke writes, "is a variance that rests in the space between the relationships you have and the relationships you want." In graphic-essay style, Radtke centers her inquiry around four human behaviors--listen, watch, click, and touch--and devotes rich, meandering chapters to each. "Listen," for instance, ponders the TV laugh track, invented because humans are less likely to laugh alone. "Watch" moves from the American obsession with a certain "cowboy sensibility" to a spread filled with real headlines describing the perpetrators of mass shootings as "loners." For "Click," Radtke posits that the much-maligned exaggeration social media encourages existed in all the technological advances before it, and "Touch" contemplates the life and experiments of Harry Harlow, who tested the often devastating limits of estrangement in baby monkeys. In a limited palette of black, blues, and peaches, Radtke's crisp, vector-drawn illustrations more than hint at reality; rather, in their layering and arrangement, they seem to reproduce it in truer, more emotional detail. Provocative and companionable, this will spark conversation and, undoubtedly, connection among readers.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
As Radtke (Imagine Wanting Only This) notes at the outset of this gripping graphic investigation, she had no way of knowing, when she began researching isolation in 2016, how on-trend her topic would become. Combining personal narrative with social science, evolutionary biology, and pop culture analysis, Radtke's work is innovative in form and painfully relevant in content. People who are socially isolated die sooner in numbers that cannot be explained simply by slip-and-falls or unchecked vices, she notes. "We need to feel deeply troubled when we observe minor social shuns so we can correct our behavior," she says, drawing convincing lines from loneliness to totalitarianism (citing Hannah Arendt) and mass shootings. She devotes a large section to Harry Harlow, whose famous studies of baby rhesus monkeys' need for affection contradicted early 20th-century messaging that cuddling one's children was unhygienic. Radtke's astute observations about social media implicate herself yet extend gentleness to her fellow lonely humans. (For example, Radtke recounts looking down on selfie-takers at an art exhibit only to end up taking one herself.) Somber illustrations range from journalistic to starkly symbolic, in variations on gray that establish a flat and lonely world, making the gradient sunset hues that sometimes burst through that much brighter. As a montage of people's faces blends together, the effect enacts the book's hopeful thesis that loneliness can be a catalyst for connection. For a treatise about the perils of being alone, it creates a wonderful sense of being drawn into conversation. Agent: Jin Auh, the Wylie Agency. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
"When I started writing this book in 2016," writes Radtke (Imagine Wanting Only This) at the beginning of this timely volume, "rates of loneliness had already been increasing exponentially for decades, yet it wasn't a subject I heard people talk about very often, at least not in relation to themselves." In often poetic prose accompanied by stunning illustration, Radtke weaves together personal anecdotes and examples drawn from physical and mental health studies to create a meditation on the causes and cost of isolation. A brief history of the television sitcom laugh track segues into a reflection on the comedies Radtke watched as a child and how they shaped her understanding of love and friendship, which leads to a discussion of the health issues associated with prolonged loneliness and then an explanation of how American media glorifies loners such as Mad Men's Don Draper. Later, an examination of social rejection as a source of aggression and irrationality prefaces revelations about Radtke's personal relationships, an analysis of the popularity of artist Yayoi Kusama, and thoughts on social media and parenthood. VERDICT An insightful and compassionate investigation of loneliness, which Radke convincingly calls "one of the most universal things any person can feel."
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An exploration of loneliness, the troubling ways we've studied it, and the subtle ways we strain to avoid it. Radtke's second graphic memoir feels almost custom-made for the social-distancing era: She explores our need for connection and touch ("skin hunger" is the psychological term) and the negative social and personal effects of isolation. But the book is a much broader and deeply affecting study of loneliness, uncovering the host of ways our craving for community manifests itself in ways that are sometimes quirky and sometimes terrifying. Laugh tracks on sitcoms, for instance, offer a sense of communal feeling within a cold medium; so, too, did the Web 1.0 sites and chatrooms Radtke obsessed over, where strangers laid out their private thoughts and fears. The anxiety runs deep: We crave reports of mass shooters that say the perpetrator was a loner because it satisfies our need to not associate with them. "The collective branding of mass killers is a clumsy act of self-preservation," she writes. In clean, graceful renderings and a constricted color palette, Radtke expresses her own experiences with loneliness, as a child and in relationships, and gets people to open up about theirs. Along the way, she discovered unusual approaches to combatting loneliness--e.g., a hotline that elderly people can call to have someone to talk to. The author also writes about the cruel experiments psychologist Harry Harlow conducted on monkeys in the 1950s to debunk the belief that children shouldn't be emotionally coddled. Harlow himself lived a troubled, isolated life, and Radtke wonders if he projected his anxiety upon the animals he tormented in the name of science. If so, how much of our own fear of isolation do we project on the world? Throughout, Radtke is an engaging and thoughtful guide through our fear of being alone. Superb. A rigorous, vulnerable book on a subject that is too often neglected. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
