Room for Love

Middle-aged London-based romance author Pamela Greene endures crushing loneliness and a bad case of writer’s block as her editor breathes down her neck for her next novel. Inspiration arrives in the form of Cougar, a seventeen-year-old Irish drifter whom she takes pity on and allows to move into her apartment’s spare room. A sexual relationship spontaneously commences. But unlike the fantasies she crafts on the page, Pamela’s affair with the young male prostitute involves neither romance nor love, instead leading her to delve into her houseguest’s dysfunctional past while confronting her own state of emotional emptiness. Cartoonist Ilya (The End of the Century Club) approaches this graphic novel with realism that derails standard romantic tropes from its first page, conveying the characters’ melancholy mundanity with a sparse style that is a perfect complement to the script. Adult, honest, and uncomfortable, this is a graphic novel that treats its audience as intelligent residents of a world where dreams and fantasies seldom come true. (Apr.)