A comic novella written and illustrated by Bianca Bagnarelli, “Fish” is a meditation on grief, mortality, and adolescence. An afternoon in the French riviera finds twelve-year-old Milo trudging through a family reunion, still gripped by grief over his parents recent death in an automobile accident. While the story is short, Bagarnelli acutely depicts the visceral uncomfortableness of the awareness of mortality that comes with adolescent tragedy; Milo struggles to assimilate death into his worldview but sees it all around him. When a missing girl appears on his family’s beach, Milo naively believes that seeing her will settle something inside of him. 

An illustrator for publications such as the New York Times and National Geographic, Bagnarelli has a unique style that elevates the comics’ subject matter. Her lines are strong, almost geometric – quite different from the soft, organic lines of cartoonists like Jillian Tamaki or Adrian Tomine. In this sense, it makes it easier to see Milo’s point of view, the frightening series of biological mechanisms and external variables that, in tandem, govern our fate. “Fish” is a melancholic but thought-provoking story of the universal struggle to comprehend the world and our feelings, and well-worth the read.