“The Late Life Crisis” by Florence Cestac

A 60 year old woman has a near death experience and decides it’s time to start living her own life.

It’s a fun romp filled with honesty and self-examination. It’s a little two-dimensional at times, but the lead character is eminently likable and fun to root for.

Things work out perhaps a bit too well, but who doesn’t like a happy ending? I like those….

Credits in Crisis

Not for the Kids

I don’t write this section to warn your children away from vileness and meanness and gore and profanity. The honest truth is, anyone under the age of 20 probably will have zero interest in reading this, anyway. But the book does deal with adult topics like breast cancer and menopause and sex and all that good stuff. There’s even some swearing in it.

Absolutely none of the above is gratuitous, but still, it’s there.

I mean, this is a book that opens with a wide panel of the protagonist’s naked chest. Granted, it’s a very cartoony one, but she’s topless for the whole first page while in the doctor’s office. Now, I’ve never been in that situation so I’ll have to let someone else tell me if that’s a normal thing. I would image, particularly in this day and age, the male doctor wouldn’t want to have a conversation with a woman about her potential breast cancer while alone in a room with her while she’s topless.

Or maybe that’s just the American legal system talking.

In any case, you might see some language in the panels I excerpted in this review that isn’t appropriate for kids’ eyes. That is all.

It’s a really good book and I’d recommend it, but I wanted to frame this review appropriately….

What’s Going On

Noemie is on her last nerve. She’s less than two years away from retirement. Her boss is a jerk, and everyone younger than her is jockeying for position. Her marriage is an empty shell of what it once was. Her mother thinks she’s Brigitte Bardot. The hot flashes are killer, and a cancer scare is constantly on her mind.

Her only outlet is drinks with her girlfriends.

“Late Life Crisis” is a book that tells her story of reaching the end of her rope and what she does to radically change her life.

A Study in Culture

There are distinct differences in American and French culture. I felt some of those in reading this book. The French are more open about certain parts of their lives than Americans tend to be. Again, this is a nation whose president’s funeral included both his wife and his mistress in attendance.

It’s something that pops up in this book in a couple of places: Men having a mistress or two is almost expected, and not a deal-breaker for a marriage. The same seems to work in reverse, too. If the wife cheats on the husband, hey, we’ll just let bygones by bygones. Besides, who hasn’t cheated on the other, anyway?

It’s a stark difference from the more American viewpoint of “Once a cheater, always a cheater, burn him at the stake and cut off his—“

Anyway.

Dargaud originally published this book in 2013, but there are a lot of attitudes in it that feel outdated already. Much of it reads like the worst part of 60s sit-coms. And I don’t say that to dismiss Cestac’s point of view. It’s very much the opposite. It’s more of what is hopefully a changing of generational expectations and societal norms.

You get the husband whose only concern is when his wife is going to make him dinner, despite the fact he’s retired and spends all day at home watching sports on TV. The lecherous boss is a complete skirt-chaser, no matter the age of the woman wearing the skirt. It’s all the classic worst stereotypes of men. And it’s not that they don’t exist anymore. I think we’re all just more aware of them and less accepting of them today.

If some parts of the book feel dated, that’s the most likely reason.

I hope. I mean, I know the #MeToo cultural shift has been a little slower in France for a culture where sex is so much more an open and expected part of society, but some of the attitudes in this book, in general, I have to think are slowly (and not quickly enough) fading away even over there.

Or, oh no, am I more woke than I thought?

How did this review turn into a self-examination of feminism? Comics are crazy….

The Art of Cestac

I love Cestac’s trademarked big nose style. I know it won’t be for everyone, but it’s very appealing to me. And she leans into it, too. In the coloring process, every bulbous protuberance on every face has a shine on the top of it.

The mouths hang off the lower part of the nose in a way that might not completely make sense if you make a 3D model of the head, but works perfectly as comic book art.

The wide eyes are super expressive, there’s plenty of room left for individualization of the characters with their hair, glasses, and body shapes/clothing.

But, most of all, Cestac uses all of that to its fullest. These are characters who can emote. Every panel is well considered, with no image wasted. Characters move and gesture and grimace all at the perfect times.

There’s an energy to every page of this book that jumps right out at you. Cestac uses a nine panel grid for all her storytelling, which lets her focus on telling the story through the characters.

Here’s one of the more extreme examples, perhaps, of this. It’s a moment when Noemie is at her wit’s end with being everyone’s savior at a time when nobody seems to care bout her. Also, her hot flashes are only getting worse…

It’s a funny page, but it also shows her rage and frustration. The red splash of color in the background shows both her rage and her body temperature issues. The panel borders shake. The lettering grows a few points in size and change fonts. And Noemie just goes at it, like she’s about to submit this scene for her Oscar nomination.

Cestac is using the comics medium to its fullest in this sequence, throwing every trick in the book onto the page to tell the story.

I don’t know if it’s how the original French script ran or if we can credit translator Montana Kane here, but I love that pun on “I’m ovary this shit!”

But there’s one little thing amidst this all that jumps out at me now. Look at that first panel, as her daughter asks her to babysit. The daughter, being carried over her mother’s shoulder, drops her rabbit stuffed animal on the street and calls after it. It’s a little moment that’s completely unnecessary, but also helps add to the feeling of lives out of control. It’s also a touch of verisimilitude. We’ve all held babies who launch stuff at the ground for no apparent reason when we don’t want them to….

Recommended?

It’s a strong character piece done with a surprisingly light-hearted style. What would be a book today about an oppressed woman overcoming her abuser and society’s built-in systemic inequities is instead the story of an every woman overcoming incredible trials to find her own way in the world and start her life over at an age most would be unwilling to.

It comes perhaps a bit too easily for her. Where she has troubles, she has friends at the ready, willing to help. The second half of the book feels almost too easy after the first half works so hard at establishing her every day troubles, most of which I’m sure would be familiar to woman of her age and, yes, even younger. Society hasn’t straightened itself out that far.

But the book does feel oddly weighted. The problems she faces before she makes her big life changes are crushing weights. They fight against her on every panel of every page.

Once she makes the switch, the story hums along and she overcomes one obstacle to get everything to work out well. It just feels a little too easy, even if it isn’t. I’m glad there’s a happy ending and that Cestac is so sure to justify it wi

This might also be far too deep an analysis of this light-hearted book. I should be reading it with the same view that I might a month’s worth of “Cathy” comic strips — chuckling at her foibles, laughing off the bad behaviors of others, and resigning one’s self to the idea that nothing ever changes.

Having written all that, I might have to admit that my review might be biased by one fact. Cestac dedicated this book to her grandson, who has the awesome name Auguste.

We Augies have to stick together!

— 2019.043 —

Other Books By Florence Cestac

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