Lightness

Lightness - Graphic novel - Catherine Meurisse - Dargaud, 2016

Catherine Meurisse narrowly escaped the Charlie Hebdo attack on January 7, 2015. A press cartoonist at Charlie for some ten years, she was just a few meters away when her colleagues and friends were brutally murdered. In the aftermath of the tragedy, as a cure for the violence that has invaded her life, she seeks to rediscover beauty. This beautiful album retraces her quest for lightness in Rome, by the ocean, on country lanes and in the Louvre. Catherine Meurisse was stunned for the first few days after the attack. Then come the first symptoms of PTSD: sleep disturbances, avoidance, flashbacks. Little by little, she tries to reconnect with what made sense in her life before, but also with what gave strength and vitality to her murdered friends. It's a beautiful, poetic album, full of humor and tenderness, that gives strength and courage, that it's possible to get better, even when damaged and transformed by trauma. Catherine Meurisse clings to life, to what makes her feel good, what moves her, and uses gentleness to combat all the violence she has suffered. A feel-good album that will touch people with PTSD who are struggling to rediscover a taste for life. It will also help those close to them to understand what they are going through. It can be read without difficulty by children aged fifteen and over.

• Graphic novel