BookBrowse Reviews Something, Not Nothing by Sarah Leavitt

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A powerful graphic memoir that explores chronic illness, loss, and learning to live alongside grief.

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In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, Donimo, made the unthinkably difficult decision to end her life via medical assistance. The couple had been together for twenty-two years. A cartoonist and teacher of comics classes at the University of British Columbia, Leavitt channeled her sorrow into Something, Not Nothing, a graphic memoir documenting her first two years without Donimo.

Structured chronologically, Something, Not Nothing reads like a diary of those two painful years—although, mirroring the unpredictable and non-linear quality of grief, it is not always straightforward. The narrative is full of abstract musings, fragments of memories, and stuttering run-on sentences:

"Don't act like it's all ok it's not and a lot of it is a lot of it is trying to find her in the dark and scrambling after and pleading when she when and and trying and never figuring most of it out until much later and it's bad."

Elsewhere, Leavitt is cleareyed, as when she details with harrowing honesty her partner's health complications, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and injuries from car accidents. Reflecting on Donimo's choice to seek assisted suicide, she writes, "I think she made the decision to die in bits and pieces, over and over, an accumulation of suffering, an absence of any other option."

Leavitt's experiments with art, text, and the combination of the two reflect her navigation of the grieving process; reading Something, Not Nothing feels like being inside her mind as she adapts to her new reality. Most of the book adheres to a fairly typical comic layout of twelve panels to a page, in what feels like a visual attempt by the author to bring structure to her days. But even these panels are hand drawn, adding to the informal, journal-like quality of Leavitt's storytelling. In some moments, traditional structure is abandoned altogether, and the artwork becomes much more abstract and free flowing; in other moments of anguish, Leavitt forgoes text in favor of surreal, expressive imagery. These artistic choices are as sophisticated as they are emotionally moving.

Equally as interesting as the author's structural choices are her uses of color. Although the book opens in black and white—a world literally devoid of color following Leavitt's loss—color soon begins to seep back in. Hues of purple and blue represent feelings of sorrow and loneliness; splashes of yellow symbolize moments of laughter and healing. At times, these contrasting colors meet in kaleidoscopic, surreal tableaus, representing the contradictions of grief—contradictions that Leavitt explores in the accompanying text. "This was a time when everything was true all at the same time. I was full of golden love. I was an empty, crumbling husk," she writes. And later: "What if I could tell you everything with colours and no words? Bright yellow? Stupid purple? Then you would see how laughter and grief are together here…"

Something, Not Nothing is full of keen insights about love and loss, and about the way feelings can evolve over time. For Leavitt, grief's presence, while terrible, is something consistent that keeps Donimo at the forefront of her mind, a way of holding onto her in the absence of anything tangible. As she takes slow, tentative steps towards life without Donimo, she feels sadness and guilt: "You feel so much farther away this month. Ever since the year mark passed, really. Smudged? Faded? Muffled? I've been grateful for the quiet but the loss of violent grief—bright, clear flashes of you—is a loss too."

The book, too, is a testament to the power of art and creation; Leavitt understands that when words fail, visual art can bring comfort and clarity. Finding respite in doodling horses when feeling overwhelmed, Leavitt writes, "My heart and everyone's heart dissolves. We yell swear words. And at the same time, there are horses… The horses don't change anything. Everyone who died is still dead. I continue to despair. I continue to rage. So does everyone. But keep reading. Here is a horse."

Deeply personal yet agonizingly familiar for anyone who has lost a loved one, Something, Not Nothing is a bold and remarkable book, and one that for many people will be a resonant and cathartic read.

This review first ran in the October 16, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.