Always Never - Jordi Lafebre - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Jordi Lafebre

TRANSLATOR: Montana Kane

GENRE: Graphic Novel

PUBLICATION DATE: May 26, 2021

RATING: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A graphic novel that left me uncertain of my feelings. Almost balanced between positives and negatives in terms of quantity, but the negatives were heftier in weight. It does have some appeal, though I don’t think I can recommend it heartily. This is an outlier opinion.

Plot Preview:

Newly retired mayor Ana and newly-turned-PhD Zeno, both in their sixties, are meeting after thirty-seven years, hoping to finally get started on their life together. What happened in the last four decades? Why couldn’t the two be together? We learn their story in reverse chronological order.

This book was first published in 2020 in French under the title ‘Malgré tout’. This English translation came out in 2022.

There are two ways of looking at this story.

One: It’s a story about two lovers who stayed apart until they were finally free to be with each other.

Two: It’s a story about two people who continued a long-distance dalliance with each other despite the fact that they met only once and one is now a married parent.

Which of these is accurate?

Both are.

Which of these is right?

Depends on your perspective. I don’t feel right about condoning infidelity, especially without cause.

The rest of my opinion is also filled with contradictory feelings.

✔ Reverse storytelling, beginning with Chapter Twenty and moving backwards to Chapter One where it all began. Interesting approach.

❌ The reverse narration comes only with chapter numbers, not years or year references. We hardly ever know how many years pass in between chapters, which leaves many gaps in the plot.

✔ The above approach keeps our curiosity alive about why the lovers were apart for so many years.

❌ Chapter One, the final chapter, is the biggest letdown. Written without text, so we don’t see anything except the event that brought them together. As such, we don’t get a legitimate reason for the whole “one true love” spiel we see in the earlier chapters.

✔ The contrary personalities of the two leads: one a nomad in terms of locations as well as love, the other looking for stability in her career as well as marriage. At the same time, the nomad is also an intellectual, and the stable one has a wild side. A great exploration of the multiple facets of human nature.

❌ Only the two leads get proper character development. The rest get zilch. The worst injustice is done to Ana’s husband Giuseppe, who is shown supportive of her feelings for Zeno without any explanation for his charitable opinion. Ana is still married to Giuseppe even as she begins the new phase of her life with Zeno.

✔ The plot seems to have some strength, especially in terms of showing a woman mayor obsessed with the completion of an engineering project and a nomadic physicist with an eccentric theory about time.

❌ There are too many ideas that have no bearing on the love story track, and too many unclarified points that could have explained the love track better. Because of the time jumps, some subplots stay incomplete.

✔ Excellent art, quite quaint at times. Loved how the passage of time was shown through the characters’ faces. The background and the colouring was fabulous. Some panels involve a kind of dual scene that works in parallel across their two locations – these are outstanding. The cover is also adorable.

❌ Their bodies seemed to be in the same shape throughout, with one key natural exception. Only their faces age. The lettering was poor; some words were barely legible in the digital version.

Overall, I expected better from the cover and the blurb. The art is great, but the plot doesn’t meet the potential, especially as the characters come out more as self-absorbed than as sacrificing. Of course, the reverse storytelling approach is a novelty, so if that appeals to you, you might still give this graphic novel a go.

2.5 stars, rounding down wherever applicable for the unwarranted infidelity.