The Con Artists: Luke Healey

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And ultimately, there is something to be said about the juxtaposition of the (more blatant) ways others deceive us and the (more subtle) ways we deceive ourselves. The interplay between the characters reveals their personality issues and paints a portrait of a very dysfunctional relationship. It’s a nice, short read and I appreciate the layers Healey is trying to peel back and deconstruct but I don’t feel like I would be reading it over either as an autobiographical work or as a portrayal of mental health. It’s worried Frank, not Giorgio, who asks this question, but almost immediately he begins to regret the offer. I do understand that it's supposed to be an exploration of mental illness and toxic friendships, and that it doesn't make sense in real life, but narrative-wise, it felt kind of.

Then again, even on a first reading, it’s a stand-out: so funny and melancholy, so knowing and true.I enjoyed the way the author interspersed snippets from standup comedy routines and therapy sessions throughout the chapters.

What might have initially been funny on a first read becomes poignant in its failed earnestness, and then depressing and disturbing when the lines are repeated before various audiences throughout the course of the comic. A lot of the story made me feel uncomfortable, which isn't a bad thing in a story about a toxic relationship and dealing with mental health issues.These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. It isn’t hard at all to imagine such frenemies as the stars of some future film or TV series, though personally I would be quite content if Healy would only give them another outing between hard covers.When it comes to the portrayl of mental illness you can tell it's something the author has experience with, though I didn't love the somewhat dissmissive epilogue. Frank (the standup comedian who is the book’s narrator) and Giorgio were friends as children, and on paper they’re very similar: both Irish in London, both gay and both single.

With classics such as Ted Hughes's The Iron Man and award-winners including Emma Carroll's Letters from the Lighthouse, Faber Children's Books brings you the best in picture books, young reads and classics. I might as well come come straight to the point: The Con Artists by Luke Healy is my favourite graphic novel of the year so far, and to be honest, it might just be among my favourite comics ever. Healy opens this with a section declaring this as TOTALLY FICTION, NOTHING to do with ME and then interrupts the story half way to take a break and reassert that this is TOTALLY fiction, so that is funny.Frank is willfully antisocial yet lonely, a paradox that haunts the millennial generation, well reflected in The Con Artists. Moving in with and caring for his estranged childhood friend quickly starts to chip away at Frank's sense of self, as well as Giogio's carefully curated online persona. Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today.