Juliette: or, the Ghosts Return in the Spring

By Camille Jourdy. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. 

Softcover, 236 pages, Colour, 2023

A vibrant tableau of small-town life as seen through the eyes of a woman returning home from Paris.

Juliette boards a train from Paris and comes back to her hometown hoping for a low-key visit with family and old friends. What she finds is anything but. Her sister, a caregiver and mother of two, is carrying on an elaborate affair with a man from a costume shop. Her parents, separated, are now estranged. Father is sure he’s coming down with Alzheimer’s, though it’s more likely that he’s simply getting old. Mother, on the other hand, revels in the second act of her life as a free woman, an artist with a show at their local gallery to prove it. Slowly, Juliette finds herself entangled with the unlikely Georges, a dyspeptic alcoholic who is stuck in his life. These divergent paths inevitably cross one another against a gloriously painted backdrop of eccentric small-town living.

Jourdy’s beautiful watercolor pages provide an unfeigned mileu for the subtle dramedy at hand. All too real human emotions, bittersweet and relatable in their rawness come together to form a poetic realism.

Translated by Aleshia Jensen.