Book Review: My Most Secret Desire by Julie Doucet

This past week I recieved a $50 gift certificate for Paragraphe from QPIRG Concordia in appreciation for my volunteer efforts there (that gift increased my appreciation for QPIRG Concordia). With it I bought two books, A Short History of Almost Everything by Bill Bryson, which I've just started, and My Most Secret Desire, a cartoon book by Julie Doucet. What I didn't realize when I bought it was that most of it is set in Montreal, as Julie Doucet is and has been a Montrealer.

I found it in the graphic novels section of the bookstore, by the way. I suppose "graphic novel" sounds more weighty than "cartoon novel" or "comic book", but basically you've got picture panels in which characters communicate with speech bubbles. Call it what you like.

These cartoons were done between 1989 and 1997, originally appearing in her series Dirty Plotte, and it depicts the rather vivid dreams, nightmares and fantasies of a twentysomething artist in Montreal, trying to make ends meet with other jobs, imagining what it would be like to be a man, having a recurring dream about giving birth to kittens, and so on.

Some of it is unsettling, but a lot of it is funny. For me, the funniest bits are "A Day in Julie Doucet's Life", which depicts just that (hopefully just a bad day, though!) and "The Day I Can't Take It Anymore", her fantasy about going off to live in the wilderness and living with imaginary friends, including a plucked/beheaded chicken named Baxter. This is humour that comes out of some pretty desperate situations.

Some of it is unsettling, but I have to say I admire Doucet's courage- she doesn't censor herself. Before I'd even have got halfway to where she gets to I'd be saying to myself "Do I really want to share this with the world? What would people think of me?", etc., etc. I'm also not sure whether to be envious or grateful that I don't get such vividly memorable dreams. Probably the latter.