Fight the shame of your sexuality by speaking out loud and clear. This is the bet that Montreal author and illustrator Éloïse Marseille has taken on for her first album, Confessions of a Normal Woman, which appears this week at Pow Pow editions. To do this, the author does not hesitate to invite us into her intimacy by making us live, with her, the highlights of her sexual and romantic history in a quest based on openness, understanding and a lot of humor. .
In fact, the title of this autofiction-like album, since the author stages herself, could have been “How I learned to love myself better” and that would have done the trick just as well. because, basically, that is what it is all about. How can you accept yourself if you don’t understand yourself? And to understand each other, you have to go into the truth. And that’s exactly what Éloïse Marseille does: present important moments from the sexual history of a young woman who is not yet thirty years old and who seeks to validate her emotions.
And that’s where this album gets really interesting, because it’s done with great lucidity. From the first excitement, at age 11, watching a somewhat erotic scene in a film, with parents who refuse to talk about sex, to his discovery of pornography and masturbation, everything is told with hindsight tinged with just enough of self-mockery so that we recognize ourselves, in part, in our fears and our sexual memories, good or bad.
Accept your body
She also tackles frankly her relationship to a body grappling with thyroid problems, a body which will not be able to give her a child and which, for these reasons, has developed in a slightly different way, with all the problems of perception. that brings.
Everything is told with a voice that is reminiscent of those of Zviane or Iris, for example. The narration makes people smile most of the time, because it is so full of tenderness and acuity, without judgment about the situations or the characters. Even the drawing, a little bare, but very graphic in a very flexible approach, is reminiscent of their work. Frankly, there are worse influences and we must not forget that this is a first album. In this sense, I have the impression that we will see Éloïse Marseille take the lead over the next few years, and continue to develop a voice which already rests on a solid foundation and which can only be refined over time. .
A nice entry
All of this, put together, means that the author, who is not yet thirty, has won her bet by demonstrating that being silent, when it comes to sexuality, can only make people more unhappy.
We can say that it’s a great way to enter the world of comics.
The beginning of a long adventure?
love in cold colors