ReaditDaddy's Comic / Graphic Novel of the Week - Week Ending 1st May 2020: "The Garden" by Sean Michael Wilson and Fumio Obata (Liminal 11)

One of our favourite publishers of quirky original titles has a gorgeous selection coming out this year, and none more so than this fantastic heartwarming graphic novel that really 'spoke' to me, with a subject that a lot of professional folk will immediately identify with.

In "The Garden" by Sean Michael Wilson and Fumio Obata, we meet Joanna - a woman who has achieved a great deal in her career in finance, but also a woman who has pushed herself to her mental limits and beyond.

After suffering a nervous breakdown, she takes a holiday to Japan to soak up the amazing culture of constructing and nurturing beautiful gardens. Gardens that engage the five senses, calm, and relax, but also are fantastic for the soul.

When Joanna returns home, she is filled with inspiration and begins to wonder whether the effect that those amazing gardens had on her could also benefit others. Thus begins her voyage of discovery and self-discovery as she begins to find a passion for plants and getting back to nature.

One thing the lockdown has taught me (and probably a great many other people) is that the rat race consumes such a vast amount of our time, and it's easy to get mentally lost in the pressure of work sometimes - to the detriment of the very thing that makes you 'you'. Sean and Fumio capture this perfectly in this book, let's take a closer look inside at some of the fabulous comic spreads.

Gardening is as much about the soul and the inner peace as it is about growing things.

Fumio's atmospheric artwork is clean and crisp, and underpins the sparse story text beautifully.

Always wanted one of those fantastic Japanese water-knockers in my garden

It's a gorgeous peaceful graphic novel, like most of Liminal 11's publications, one that reaches into a place in all of us that we may have thought we've lost. Very much needed in these strange times we find ourselves in.

Sum this book up in a sentence: Joanna's story is inspirational, and one that so many of us will immediately identify with - that soul-search for the part of ourselves that we may have lost.

"The Garden" by Sean Michael Wilson and Fumio Obata is out on 26th May 2020, published by Liminal 11 (kindly supplied for review).