Southbound! by Zidrou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s quite a challenge to walk a fine line between sweetness and sentimentality and never fall on the wrong side, trading sweetness for the maudlin. And yet Zidrou manages to avoid that pitfall seemingly effortlessly, bringing to life a simple story about a Belgian family taking a summer vacation in France in 1973.
It’s just that – a story of a family vacation. Mom and Dad with the weight of the unsaid between them, four kids acting like kids, one cramped Renault, one imaginary friend, a trip cut short — and through all that mundane but strangely fascinating stuff a surprisingly warm story of family and love unfolds. There are tents and fries and lack of seatbelts in the back seat of the cramped family car, and hilariously short shorts on Dad, and family skinny dipping without prude shame, and funerals, and bouquets, and the growing pains of reconciling the dreams of your past self with the reality of your present self. And it all is sweet and charming and decidedly not cloying.
And sometimes you need to feel the warmth of the August sun and the leisurely promise of riverside camping to really reflect on who you are and what you want and need.
It’s a slice of life that feels lovely and real and very comforting in its ordinary beauty.
“Belgians…”
4.5 stars.
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Buddy read with Dennis, the comic book guru (and he loved it, too) (Although this book just begs to be called a “graphic novel”)
books are life 