It begins with Kari and her lover Ruth swooping down from the tops of their buildings. Ruth is caught in a safety net and flees abroad, while Kari falls into a sewer and emerges unscathed, if a bit rank, to walk us through her quotidian life: three female flatmates (and their changing retinue of lovers) crammed into two bedrooms, the smelly train commute to work, the copywriting job that leaves her cold.
Patil’s prettily wrought artwork conjures an atmosphere of angst and gloom. Unfortunately, the storyline doesn’t help Kari transcend this, despite introducing her to everything that could give her some depth: sexual angst, suicide, sewage, anxiety attacks, aborted foetuses, and encounters with the homeless, the battered, the dying. In Kari, pain, blood and dirt never quite amount to reality. So Kari’s cancer-stricken friend has her "madly drawn to her dying" and to the "shelf life of her skin". She plunges into sewage and comes out with a "PVC suit" and pop culture references. She falls in love and comes out with maudlin, affected cliches.
Patil cites cult comic author Alison Bechdel’s darkly funny memoir Fun Home as an inspiration. Sure, that’s about a lesbian protagonist too, but since it’s drawn from the author’s own life, it strikes a far truer, assured note.
