Page 45 Review by Stephen
"At 15, I stuck my hand into the garbage disposal."
James is not like other boys.
Curiosity is one of the few traits he shares with other people. Other than that he is an emotional void.
He discovers a porn magazine in a draw, opens it open, sees a naked woman, and after a few seconds tosses it over his shoulder. There's no connection; nothing there.
He and Alyssa have adopted each other after James decided to pretend to fall in love with her. Alyssa's more direct. She is very direct.
"God I want you."
He considers strangling her. But he doesn't.
"James and I still haven't done it all the way.
"I want to, but it's complicated.
"He seems so far away."
Later, in the passenger seat of a car which he and Alyssa have flagged down, James allows an old man, the driver, to grope him: to slide his hand under James's jeans and let it lie there. Alyssa is dumbfounded.
"What's wrong with you?"
To himself:
"I guess I thought I might feel something. Something other than nothing."
Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma and Louise, James and Alyssa: you're in for a very different sort of road trip.
Dispassionately told in eight-page instalments alternating between James's and Alyssa's point of view (originally published as individual mini-comics), this clusterfuck of a journey also alternates between the mundane and abrupt, sometimes comical violence. It is exceptionally well controlled, especially James's blank face, registering nothing, and his minimal responses when prodded.
"Alyssa, that man - he was a bad man."
It also defies expectations. The first chapter climaxes before they set off with James punching his dad in the face and stealing his car. They're off! No, they're not: the opening page of chapter two finds the car upside down in a dried-up gorge after being run off the road. Above, the crash barrier stands broken. Huge economy: we've no need to see the crash. It's not that sort of comic, as you'd anticipate if you've read Forsman's CELEBRATED SUMMER.
If you're coming to this from the Channel 4 series now on Netflix, I'm not sure what you'll make of this. You're going to have to do your best to blank Alex Lawther's commanding performance as James right out of your head. Just remember that this is the source material without which none of what you loved would have been possible: the ideas were all conceived and first executed to perfection right here.
"Did you do it inside of me?"
"I'm not sure."
