Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Graphic novel & Manga artwork

IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE

Julia Wertz

A Completely Average Recovery Story

In her keenly observed graphic memoir, Impossible People, celebrated cartoonist Julia Wertz chronicles her haphazard attempts at sobriety and the relentlessly challenging, surprisingly funny, and occasionally absurd cycle of addiction and recovery.

Opening at the culmination of a disastrous trip to Puerto Rico, the first page of Impossible People finds Julia standing stupefied in the middle of the jungle beside a rental Jeep she's just crashed. From this moment, the story flashes back to the beginning of her five-year journey towards sobriety that includes group therapy sessions, relapses, an ill-fated relationship, terrible dates, and an unceremonious eviction from her New York City apartment. Far from the typical addiction narrative that follows an upward trajectory from rock bottom to rehab to recovery, Impossible People portrays the lesser told but more common story: That the road to recover is not always linear. With unflinching honesty, Wertz details the arduous, frustrating, and hilarious story of trying and failing and trying again.

Julia Wertz is a professional cartoonist, amateur historian, and part-time urban explorer. Her books include The Fart Party, Museum of Mistakes, Drinking at the Movies, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, and Tenements, Towers, & Trash: An Unconventional, Illustrated History of New York City. She does monthly comics and doodles for the New Yorker and the New York Times. After leaving New York City, she settled down in Northern California with Oliver (yes, that Oliver) and their son, Felix.

Available products
Book Published 2023-05-09 by Black Dog & Leventhal
Book Published 2023-05-09 by Black Dog & Leventhal

Comments

Dutch: Scratch Books ; French: L'Agrume; Spanish: Errata Naturae

Wertz's punch lines are as perfectly timed and indelicate as ever, and she's augmented her trademark candor with probing insight.Unvarnished yet buoyant, this recovery memoir presents Wertz at her wry best and is sure to recruit new fans to her scrappy, irreverent diaries of the absurd. Read more...

Calling her story "completely average," Wertz has created a book that will speak to readers universally, regardless of their relationship with alcoholism and sobriety. But for those who have experience with addiction and recovery, this book is a remarkable act of generosity and community that could actually save lives. Read more...

[I]t's the trifecta of perceptivity, self-deprecating humor and deadpan delivery that transforms this from a, well, "completely average" story into something that allows everyone - even recovering boozehounds! - to join in on the fun... The main reason to pick up "Impossible People" is to be privy to Wertz's madness, whether booze-fueled or sober, and her wry take on her own idiosyncrasies, her chronic self-isolating tendencies and her ineptitude at dating... You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll laugh and cry at the same time. (At least I did.)

With her consistently engaging, well-wrought black-and-white cityscapesnative New Yorkers, in particular, will appreciate the fine details of the illustrationsWertz captures the busyness of life, teeming with possibility, including a happy ending. Her story may be "completely average," but the way she tells and draws it is extraordinary. Read more...

The New Yorker is running a first serial excerpt of IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE Read more...

In Wertz's raw and raucous misadventure memoir of getting sober, it's the friends met along the way who imbue her trademark snarky storytelling with heart - though the results are just as hilarious as ever. Through scenes of binge-drinking, bad boyfriends, and the back of diners where she finds her people in unofficial after-hours support groups, Wertz inspires, in spite of herself.