Calvin takes in his old high school friend Teddy who’s suffered a breakdown after his girlfriend Sabrina went missing and is feared dead. And so begins a strange odyssey through American life in 2018…
I really enjoyed Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina. It’s a clever, artful story that’s also entertaining, well-told and very much a product of our time. Through the fictional case of Sabrina’s disappearance, Drnaso highlights the bizarre conspiracy subculture that’s emerged online in recent years where large numbers of people choose to believe outlandish theories over reality (the Earth’s FLAT! etc.).
Except I wish he’d dug a little deeper in trying to understand this odd behaviour. He never mentions the repugnant Alex Jones/InfoWars but he’s represented by the ranting conspiracy theorist nut on the radio, and anyway I think Jones is more a product rather than the cause. I can speculate that it’s because people have become disenfranchised and disconnected from traditional institutions and society after so many lies so they now don’t believe anything they’re told, but there’s really nothing like that in the book which is why it feels a bit shallow and underdeveloped in that regard.
Drnaso’s more substantial in other areas like when he hints at our death-centric culture where some people feel they can only achieve significance in death over anything within their power in life. The sequence on the 9/11 memorial and the short video of the man despairing over his disappointment with life are both examples of this idea. And, though he never makes the banal point about how social media has only made some of us more isolated, I’m with him that the antidote to some of the nightmares unleashed by the internet is to spend time with real people doing real things in the real world.
The story starts slowly with a mundane conversation between Sabrina and her sister Sandra before morphing into something much more interesting and darker. Drnaso is a very subtle storyteller who doesn’t use omniscient narration or even caption boxes to let you know when the story jumps in time, though he’s very skilful and it’s never hard to follow what’s happening.
That subtlety works especially well regarding the videos that come out following Sabrina’s disappearance. Not actually showing the footage and leaving it up to the reader’s imagination made it much more creepy and effective. I found the social media profile photos more disturbing than actually seeing the videos themselves!
And, because we never know what’s going on in Teddy’s head, his stay with Calvin became increasingly tense. Teddy’s so unstable - what’s he going to do, how will he react to developments in the case? I also really liked how some violent conspiracy nut started sending Calvin letters claiming Calvin was some government stooge, a “crisis actor” - is Calvin safe? And that weird friend of his from work at the Air Force - is that the guy sending him the letters? That scene in the server room towards the end - chills! Drnaso genuinely kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat for the whole second half of the book.
Calvin himself is a bit of a dull main character and the ending fell flat but otherwise Sabrina is a solid, quality book. And I’m pleasantly surprised to find that a good book actually got nominated for the crusty old Booker Prize! I’m happy for Drawn & Quarterly and Nick Drnaso as they’ll make a shedload of money from the attention and hopefully all of the new comics readers - I’m sure this will be the first comic or “graphic novel” many people will read - will go on to read more from this excellent medium. Sabrina is a very good book with or without the award nomination which is just the cherry on top - come on Nick, I’m rooting for you buddy!