I found this to be a really uncomfortable read, from the art style upon first opening the book, to the themes explored and scenes depicted. Despite being relatively short, I spent quite a good few evenings coming back to this and reading it in short chunks. It quite drying explores the corporate world: corporate office slippers, corporate idea theft, corporate sexual harassment, corporate funded therapy. This left me chewing on a lot of ideas, the way a therapist who refuses to talk to you might leave you feeling. The ideas are all out in the open but no satisfying resolution is given.

Many thanks to D&Q for the advanced reader copy.

Wow, his was brutal!

I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of the style, but I guess the style itself is part of the whole deal.

This is the story of three people and their common therapist. It is a brutal but sadly realistic slice of modern life, in which abuse is common. I found reading this very hard, but I was glad it had a somewhat hopeful ending.

Oh, I don't know how to rate Aisha Franz's work! This, Work-Life Balance, is the third Drawn & Quarterly production, so she "has it made," clearly. I gave three stars to Earthling, Five stars to Shit is Real, and now three stars to this book, not that the cartooning isn't great--colorful, playful, and the story framed boringly--it has touches of Shit is Real's humor and surrealism and invention. But this is a what-to-do-after art-school book, and I have become too familiar with the tropes from this sub-genre to really care.

We have several people in dead-end jobs, jealous-to-madness over the success of a fellow grad. Then there is online therapy--Virtuapy--with a woman who gives out pills, never really talks, smokes constantly. If you twenty-something an in a boring dead end job after having so much hope for an artistic life, you will like this. And it is not about, methinks, Aisha Franz, who has three books out (not that she is independently wealthy from it, but still). It's lovely, interesting--formally cool--not interesting, ach. Colorful. Yes, of course I'll read her next one, waiting for something that is not about these twenty-something topics, ouch, sorry.

i posted it on Goodreads already