Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Sabrina makes for an uncomfortable reading experience. This is not a book for people who ‘read to get away from the news�. It is bleak, pessimistic and very, very topical.

It is one thing to read about characters going through grief, feeling isolated and disconnected from the world, unable to feel joy, unable to feel anything at all. It is an entirely different thing to watch them do so. In Sabrina, we see people curled up in a ball on the floor, or lying face down on a mattress, or staring blankly into space, their pain excruciatingly bare. We watch as characters go about the mundane tasks of daily life, much of it involving staring at screens. We watch as they attempt to connect with one another, only to fail. The emotional heft of the book is restrained, but forceful, and the minimalistic art and muted colour palette only add to its sense of alienation.

In other ways too, the visual medium is used to powerful effect. The repeated appearance of a mental health survey (“rate your overall mood from 1 to 5�) speaks volumes about our modern world in a single image. The internet � fake news, conspiracy theorists and trolls � features heavily, and this takes on extra immediacy as we see news feeds and web pages in the same basic format as the characters would see them. Disembodied voices, through internet comments, emails and talkback radio, pervade the book with aggression and paranoia.

The contrast between this frenzied-news-cycle, social-media-cacophony and the often mute, numbed trauma of the characters is stark. Sabrina is a scathing comment on the current state of our world.