I was giving myself a crash course in graphic novels when I came across Debi Gliori’s amazing book about depression, Night Shift (Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2017, $13.99). Gliori’s mostly black and white drawings show the descent into depression, and she combines these with simple but haunting text: “Mornings felt full of dread… I awoke every night afraid of something I couldn’t see.”
In Night Shift, Gliori uses dragons to represent depression. “This is partly,” she writes in the author’s note, “because of their legendary ability to
turn a fertile realm into a blackened, smoking ruin.”
Buy this book. Buy multiple copies of this book, and have them around to give to your family members and friends when their lives turn black. Because not only does Gliori so eloquently draw and describe this illness, but she also includes the most important point. The darkness lifts. As she writes
“After so many years of combat I have to admit to a certain weakness, but I will arm-wrestle with dragons for eternity if it means that I can help anyone going through a similar struggle.” She has given us all an incredible gift.
Susan Wroble 