Graphic Novel Review - Days of the Bagnold Summer - Joff Winterhart (Author & Illustrator)

Graphic Novel Review - Days of the Bagnold Summer - Joff Winterhart (Author & Illustrator)

Recommended for: Adults/Teens

It's hard to describe Days of the Bagnold Summer. In many ways, it's almost as if someone on Jackanory has sat down to read someone's diary - it's set over the course of the six week summer holidays, and we see little excerpts from what happens to Sue Bagnold, 52, a Librarian, and her son Daniel, 15, a grumpy teenager. Nothing huge happens in it, no deaths or bank robberies, just an ordinary look at the relationship between a mother and son, and what they get up to over one summer. And yet it's utterly captivating. In some places heart-warming, in some heart-breaking, I could relate to so much in it (minus the strained relationship between mother and son - I don't think I was ever particularly grumpy). Daniel has changed from a fun, outgoing young boy who had fun with his mother, to one who is lazy and uninterested in anything but being in a band, and hanging round with his odd friend, Ky.

I can remember spending a few teenagers summers in a band with friends. The excitement of dreaming about becoming a rock star, mixed with the slight nagging feeling that we weren't particularly good. For a good while, that was all that interested me, and I even lost interest in doing any form of writing - that pretty much sums up Daniel's interests throughout the book (at one point, his mother asks him why he doesn't write poetry anymore), and Sue's worrying about her son's descent into moody teenage-dom seems completely understandable when we get to see how enthusiastic about life he used to be. The parent in me wonders whether I'll think the same when my son undergoes 'the change' in 15 years time, and whether my parents noticed it much.

In fact, it's Sue's reactions throughout that make this a strangely-uncomfortable read at times. She's obviously plunging further into despair as the book carries on, until things come to a bit of a head towards the end, and although she hasn't really got much to worry about (he's just being a teenager after all), it's sad to see how much she misses the son that she feels is gone. Although we get to see why Daniel might be a bit grumpier than usual this summer - his father, who lives over in America with his new family (who he seems to care far more about), has cancelled Daniel's visit which was to last all summer. It's not suprising he's so down and feeling rejected.

I think really this is what the story nails so well - you can see both sides of the coin throughout. Daniel is just being a teenager, particularly one who has been so badly let down by someone who should be one of the strongest figures in his life. However, frankly he's a complete arse to his mother at times, and it's easy to get annoyed with the character. Sue on the other hand, elicits a great deal of sympathy from having to deal with the changes to Daniel's personality and the way he treats her at times. But, at the end of the day, children grow up and however hard it may be (God knows how I'm going to cope...) it's a change that's going to happen and it's hardly the end of the world.

It's also clear that Daniel's father departing has deeply affected Sue, who doesn't have much social life, and only begins to rectify this (to the benefit of her relationship with Daniel) towards the end of the book. It fulfills well the archetypal 'summer that changed our lives', and at the end of it you really do feel like you've been on a journey with the two of them.

Days of the Bagnold Summer was one of two graphic novels nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2012, the first two ever to have been so, and in my opinion is richly deserved. Once I'd started it I didn't want to put it down, and there's something delightful about knowing you've read such a simple story, yet feel like you've been on an adventure with the characters. It's funny, heart-warming, heart-breaking, and illustrated in it's own quirky black-and-white style.

It goes firmly in the 'borrow from your library as quick as you can' pile.

10/10