But the whole book is a memorable read full of hard-hitting passages and a style I can't help but love to bits. Occasionally there will be an interesting part, like where she is terrified of tabling at a convention and then gets more comfortable with it, and she can draw really well, she just doesn’t do it often. To say I am far more interested in Zoe Thorogood’s work when it’s her own pure and unfiltered artistic vision rather than when she’s illustrating someone else’s stories would be a somewhat entitled statement. I am polite and appropriate when people compliment or admire me, I hold the intellectual knowledge of their intentions, which are good and pro social. Thorogood switches from speaking directly to the reader, to interacting with her other iterations and to narrating in the third person, all allowing us to absorb each sequence on different empathetic levels.

Following the release of her well-received debut graphic novel, The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott, Thorogood finds that artistic success is no cure for lifelong depression, which she draws as a looming Babadook-like monster. And it's this reluctance ever to let things sink into pure misery which saves the book from ending up as gruelling a read as many of its genre bedfellows. It follows the author during six months of her life as she struggles with suicidal depression, meaning that there isn’t really a storyline, as the point is to simply show what it is like in her head during that time. Replete with visual metaphor It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth employs photo inserts, bursts of colour to emphasise mood changes, collage, some incredibly clever lettering choices to supplement theme and tone, and occasional step-backs into plot and art breakdowns. There is a frenetic energy that roars forward through this highly metafictional memoir experiment that would feel twee or already well-trodden in lesser hands but becomes this incredible work that feels just as messy and lovely as real life should be.At age 23 Thorogood looks to chart six months of her life from a mental health perspective, exploring that struggle with depression with frequent reference to her past history of suicidal thoughts. Thorogood is something of a paradox, she can draw herself as an attractive, cute character whilst resolutely refusing to recognise that anyone else might see her as attractive or cute.

She starts her auto-bio-graphical-novel with a dancing protagonist, narrating that if this was a movie, it would an introduction to a slice of life drama or a romcom, but it isn't and she wants to stab herself in the neck with a sharp knife. Still, once I was past that, even I'm not (quite) a heartless enough pedant not to feel something from the progression through "I don't want to kill myself because he left me.Some of the pages are stunningly beautiful, some are incredibly creative, some are staggeringly minimal. Because the narrative is so very focused on the author and her often suicidal thoughts, the ending could only ever go in one of two ways, fortunately it ends with the author trying to dig herself out of the self-regarding hole she's dug herself into rather than the more permanent and tragic one.

Centre of the Earth is an important work as a discussion of trauma, depression, and the hope that can keep one moving forward. Thorogood uses different drawing styles and colors in an imaginative way that makes it easier to understand which mental perspective is being focused on. I've read a lot of comics (and other) memoirs lately about depression, but none quite as lively and inventive as this.I want to say that It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood is a bit quirky and unorthodox but it's just fascinating.