A poetic novel that plumbs the depths of self-doubt and technological fatigue
Julie Delporte's Everywhere Antennas is a deeply affecting, sparely constructed novel, equal parts Walden and The Bell Jar. Told in the first person, it offers diary-like entries from an anonymous narrator who is undergoing a nervous breakdown and struggling to hold together a failing relationship. In soft, flowing colored pencil, Delporte shows her narrator coming to terms with a rare and misunderstood sensitivity to the radiation emitted by the televisions, cell phones, and computers that permeate urban life.
On each page a few words are paired with an image or two, conveying a moment or a thought simply but effectively. Over the course of the book, the anonymous narrator moves from place to place, looking for solutions to her melancholy in the countryside via isolation and in the city with friends, sometimes turning to medication for answers. Throughout, her emotional and intellectual landscape receives as much attention as her physical surroundings.
Everywhere Antennas is the portrait of a woman caught in the margins, struggling to balance the demands of technology and modern life with the need to find meaningful relationships and work. Roughly hewn figures, sketched in pencil crayon on brightly contrasting backgrounds, populate the pages of this flowing, emotive work. With Everywhere Antennas, Delporte proves herself a master craftswoman of heartbreakingly personal, beautifully literary graphic fiction.

Julie Delporte's profile page

Helge Dascher has for 25 years translated texts with a dynamic relationship to images. A background in art history and literature has grounded her translation of over sixty graphic novels, many by artists who have broadened the medium's storytelling range. Her translations included acclaimed titles such as Julie Delporte's This Woman's Work (co-translated with Aleshia Jensen, Drawn and Quarterly, 2019), Sophie Bédard's Lonely Boys (co-translated with Robin Lang, Pow Pow Press, 2020) and Michel Rabagliati's "Paul" books (Drawn and Quarterly, Conundrum). She also translates exhibitions, digital stories, and films, most recently Theodor Ushev's The Physics of Sorrow (with Karen Houle, NFB, 2019). A Montrealer, she works from French and German to English.

Helge Dascher's profile page

[Julie Delporte's] beautiful, existential graphic novel, Everywhere Antennas, did not disappoint. Despite its preoccupation with technology, Everywhere Antennas ' rough-hewn scrapbook aesthetic has a vital, refreshing offline sensibility." - Quill & Quire Best Books of the Year

"In Delporte's second book of impressionistic, illustrated diary entries, the Montreal-based cartoonist practices a kind of deceptive simplicity . . . [her] lo-fi, artisanal methods shimmer with the fluidity of the natural world." - Globe and Mail

"[ Everywhere Antennas is a] contemplative visual diary . . . profound moments appear in the most unlikely places." - CBC Books Holiday Gift Guide

"Julie Delporte's haunting . . . fictional journal of a woman is created from sparse entries and beautiful sketches drawn with colored pencil . . . It's an intriguing read that draws you along page-by-page." - Bitch Magazine
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