"In Something, Not Nothing, Sarah Leavitt embraces the ways that comics can work as poetry, creating pages that scan like quatrains and tercets of interestingly varied (but always precise) meter to describe the territory of grief."
—New York Times
"Leavitt's drawings depict her emotional upheaval with poetic grace, in imagery ranging from abstract black-and-white to warm colors and recognizable figures during moments of serenity and acceptance. This unflinching chronicle offers readers who have experienced loss a sense of catharsis and solace."
—Publishers Weekly
"Leavitt labels Something Not Nothing 'a collection of comics,' but that phrase barely begins to describe Leavitt's formally innovative artwork: freehand panels and full-page images that combine poetic text with illustrations and abstract images and textures, realized in watercolor, ink, and colored pencil. She chronicles the couple's progress toward the decision to end Donimo's life, as well as her own deep resistance and terror, taking us literally to a place beyond words ... A uniquely gorgeous chronicle. Full box of tissues recommended."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Leavitt's experiments with form and medium over the course of two years coalesced into an emotional, inventive work that meditates on loss while celebrating the possibilities of moving forward."
—Quill and Quire
"This visceral and heartbreaking graphic memoir does so much more than nearly all the other work in its medium and does it so differently, it almost doesn't feel like a comic. But, of course, it is ... The formal experimentation and abstract watercolour art pair perfectly with Leavitt's brutally honest words, simultaneously life-affirming and full of love, while expressing the despair and illogic characteristic of intense grief."
―Autostraddle ("Best Queer Books of the Year")
"Ultimately, what Leavitt manages to capture [in Something, Not Nothing], which, to be honest, seems like it should be impossible, is how MAiD can be personal, and how you can hold respect for your loved one and mourn life as you knew it at the same time."
—Xtra
"A gorgeous, heart-wrenching, deeply human meditation on love and loss. There were pages that lifted my spirits and pages that pierced me to my core. Sobbed through the majority of reading it, but couldn't put it down. Leavitt's mapmaking of the landscape of grief is a gift to us all."
—Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer: A Memoir
"Sarah Leavitt has created a beautiful monument in this book: a primal portrait of grief and a powerful testament to a hard and lasting love. I believe that we as artists are trying to share our emotional realities with our readers and invite them into the feeling even when they've not had this particular experience. Leavitt succeeds in this over and over again through the intimacy she lets the reader in on and the powerful juxtaposition of her art and words. This book is a beautiful, deep, and powerful use of the comics form."
—Nicole J Georges, author of Calling Dr. Laura
"Something, Not Nothing is a stunning visual and poetic mapping of belonging, attachment, love, and tremendous loss. Through tiny portraits and vignettes, Leavitt charts a course through the emotional chaos of grief, anchored in an atmosphere of love and a practice of presence. The result is not your typical book about grief, but an artistic treatise challenging readers to live and love more courageously, especially in the most difficult of times."
—Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of Noopiming
"Reading Sarah Leavitt's gorgeous memoir, I was struck by its silences. The places where language stopped or stuttered. The quiet that ambles forward beyond the death of a loved one. So many panels hold the weight of an absence impossible to fathom. The not-knowing. How death feels at once too true and not at all. This is the best kind of book, with all its unsettling comforts. We'll all need a book like this one day. Thank our atoms that Sarah Leavitt has gifted us this one."
—Michael V. Smith, author of Queers Like Me
"A powerful love story culled from the complicated honesty of medically assisted death. With unexpected and sometimes funny wisdoms as tender and searing as they are poetic and radiantly documentary, not since Maus have I felt so much in the pages, panels, and gutters of a comic book. Leavitt has made a memoir of heartbreaking wonder."
—Canisia Lubrin, author of Code Noir
"Sarah Leavitt's book is like nothing I have seen before. Hues, lines, textures articulate her deeply personal journey through grief just as much as the words—there is such wisdom and beauty here, which is only surpassed by love. What a gift to the world."
—Hiromi Goto, author of Shadow Life
"The fact that I wrote this blurb through tears should be enough of an endorsement. This book's visceral illustrations and words are a declaration of unending love to one who is lost, an apology for moving on, a commitment to joining the land of the living. Fellow grievers: prepare to be seen."
—Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough
"This book is so beautiful. It's hard to find something profound to say about a work of art this profound. I just think you should read it."
—Zoe Whittall, author of Wild Failure
★ 2024-05-30
A powerfully intimate graphic memoir of a partner's assisted suicide.
“On April 21, 2020, my partner, Donimo, died. She had a medically assisted death beside a rushing river with people she loved holding her tight. She was 54.” So begins Leavitt’s extraordinary record of loss, with a brief handwritten prologue describing Donimo's character, suffering, and diagnosis with a series of debilitating illnesses. The author labels the art that follows "a collection of comics," but that phrase barely begins to describe Leavitt's formally innovative artwork: freehand panels and full-page images that combine poetic text with illustrations and abstract images and textures, realized in watercolor, ink, and colored pencil. She chronicles the couple's progress toward the decision to end Donimo's life, as well as her own deep resistance and terror, taking us literally to a place beyond words. Along the way, there is dark humor (“The 73rd stage of grief generally coincides with March 31”), anguish, tenderness, engaging storytelling, and philosophy. In the final section, Leavitt writes about when she and Donimo learned about the Jewish concept of Olam Habah, the world to come: “The rabbi said, ‘I have learned that there is something—not nothing—out there waiting for us. Something wonderful and loving and peaceful and joyous.’” Leavitt wondered if that could possibly be true, and this incredibly moving and beautiful book documents her journey toward an answer. It is a fitting follow-up to the author's debut,Tangles, a graphic memoir about her family's experience with Alzheimer's, which is being adapted into a film with an all-star cast. “Donimo continues,” writes Leavitt, “whether it’s in an afterlife where she races through the sky or hovers above me to the left….And I continue also in my alive body. I think it’s the continuing that matters.”
A uniquely gorgeous chronicle. Full box of tissues recommended.
