Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story
by Julia Wertz
Buy on AmazonIn her keenly observed graphic memoir, Impossible People, celebrated cartoonist Julia Wertz chronicles her haphazard attempts at sobriety and the relentlessly challenging, surprisingly funny, and occasionally absurd cycle of addiction and recovery. Opening at the culmination of a disastrous trip to Puerto Rico, the first page of Impossible People finds Julia standing stupefied in the middle of the jungle beside a rental Jeep she's just crashed. From this moment, the story flashes back to the beginning of her five-year journey towards sobriety that includes group therapy sessions, relapses, an ill-fated relationship, terrible dates, and an unceremonious eviction from her New York City apartment.…
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"Julia Wertz has been writing autobiographical comics for years, with recent digressions into documenting New York City landscapes. Now she has returned to autobiography, and her latest book opens with her standing alone in a jungle beside a wrecked car. How did she get here? With her trademark dark humor laced with earnestness, sensitivity and wit, Wertz’s wiry black-and-white comics trace the roots of her slow road to sobriety. This tome is unusually absorbing for the unflinching way the narrator exposes her uneasy path to vulnerability – with friends, other loved ones and, ultimately, herself."
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