This is a book that only came to my attention because I had a Read Harder task to complete and nothing on my current 600+ Want to Read shelf on Goodreads had anything that fit the bill. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first wordless comic I’ve ever read as an adult.
This is the second book that I tried for this task, as the first ended up not actually being wordless and I returned it to the library (Google is no longer as reliable as it used to be). Some prolonged additional hunting on library websites and general googling for resources that could be trusted finally sent me A Sea of Love, and one look at the art had me requesting it from my library system.
Once it arrived, I marveled at the beautiful design of the book. The tin of sardines becomes the motif for the entire cover art front and back, right down to an ingredients list on the back cover. Once I got reading, I had a moment of mental frustration. I am so entirely accustomed to reading words either instead of or with illustrations that my brain sort of glossed over making meaning from what it was seeing. I gave myself a break, and picked the book back up another day when I felt a little fresher and then I was able to sink into the story, but I think I still missed a bit because I was lacking the appropriate cultural background to fully grasp what the images were telling me (the book was written and illustrated by two Frenchmen and is set in Brittany an area I am unfamiliar with).
The book follows as an older fisherman leaves his wife and home to go on a fishing trip but is literally caught up by a large trawler and doesn’t return when he is supposed to arrive home. We follow the ever-increasing adventures of his boat as he makes his way across the Atlantic. We also follow the exploits of his wife who is not giving up hope of his return, even if it means crossing the Atlantic herself to look for him. Her bits of the story were my favorite. The art is beautiful, the way the panels are broken up gives great pacing, and the seagulls are hysterical.