Blue PIlls: a positive love story by Fredereick Peeters

Highly Recommended

Blue Pills : a positive love story by Frederik Peeters


I finished this graphic novel this week, and when I was done, I decided I didn't like it very much. I felt a bit alienated from the narrative. However, the more I think about it, the more I keep thinking about what I like about it. I think translation issues may have keep the language from conveying the chunky sweetness of the overall story.

The strong point of this book is definitely in the art. My husband took one look at the first few pages and handed the book back to me. "Too ugly, why are you reading this?" In those first few pages, the scruffy art really helps to elucidate the character of the artist, and shows how he feels at the beginning of his own story. He is more or less healthy, but not happy. Later, the sweet moments are shown in the same scruffy style, but the indecision and chaos are subdued by the strong positive emotions shown by the characters.

The book deals with AIDS, not in the panic stricken first glance of the disease, but in the long term care and feeding of it within the relationship between the three characters: Positive Mom and Positive Son plus so far not-infected Fred. We care about the characters, and learn through the story that although Fred is occasionally a self-centered idiot, he is learning to care about others because of this relation ship. His life is more complicated than ever, but it is richer life for him having not walked away at any of the tough points.

I think this book is an important layer in the overall global discussion of AIDS. Unlike Rent, which showed the long-term lives of a younger, hipper sufferer,, this shows adults coping with their lives, some of which have been forever changed by decisions made in their pasts. Not only does Cati care for her son as a memory of that past, she cares for their shared disease as well. It isn't the whole conversation, but a lyrical and personal account that should be shared.