P.T. Smith

Lucas Harari’s debut graphic novel, Swimming in Darkness, has all the markers of a debut by a talented, creative, smart young dude. It’s full of promise as the first movement in a career with potential. If you like work in a noir-influenced genre that takes place in a mysterious location filled with freaky locals and conspiracies, then this is for you.

Living through dread is usually an extremely uncomfortable experience, whether in life or art. Sometimes in art, discomfort is the point, horror movies being an easy example. In The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, translated by Pablo Strauss, Matthieu Simard tacks the ship of dread in a different direction. For the most part, it is a pleasurable book, the dread passing by like a quiet late summer day in the countryside, with neat sentences paced nicely with more indulgently pretty or philosophical ones.