This delicate, multi-layered mediation on memory, loss and the allure of abandoned spaces is an astonishingly sure-footed first work.... Radtke's clear and earnest linework adds a dimension that elevates it above the standard 'young person's memoir' genre, while bringing the narrative strengths of contemporary literary non-fiction to the graphic novel format. -Forbes

Radtke is, first and foremost, a superhuman of illustration, a grandmaster like Adrian Tomine or Chris Ware. . . . Close-ups of hands and faces alternate with expansive landscapes painted in delicate shades of gray, a ray from a flashlight pierces the night, birds swoop up into the sky in silhouette, a ceiling fan morphs into an airplane in the eyes of an insomniac. Not a line is out of place in these drawings, as they depict contemporary reality with uncanny precision. . . . As Radtke attempts to engage with an immense idea that is beyond most people's grasp-how to live when all things come to an end?-what ultimately emerges is a portrait of a powerful mind grappling with alienation and loneliness. -Anya Ulinich, The New York Times Book Review

With elegant writing and arresting drawings, Kristen Radtke's Imagine Wanting Only This . . . grapple[s] with the limits of how much understanding our past can help us comprehend our present. . . . Radtke balances the personal-insomnia, failed love, her own heart ills, and loss-with larger historical forces and events. Her atmospheric black and white drawings shift between close-ups of telling details-a pile of mail on the floor, a single hanging bulb in a garage-and powerful full-page illustrations. She is a master of silhouette and shadow, of negative space, evoking a sense of potent isolation. -Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe

One of the most haunting graphic memoirs I've ever read. . . . As we turn the pages on [Radtke's] journey, we are ravaged and ravished. There is a proud tradition of graphic memoirists-of those dually equipped to wield word and image-to tell the true and deeply considered story of a life. Alison Bechdel, Roz Chast, Riad Sattouf, David Small, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman and others have done it searingly well. Add now to that list Radtke, who proves herself an equal among equals with this debut book. . . . Radtke's imagination can't help itself. Her final pages are unapologetic; they are forecasts. They force the reader to confront the world as the world might soon be. Did you really just do that, Kristen Radtke? I said the words out loud, the first time I finished reading Imagine Wanting Only This. Are you allowed? To disarm us, to charm us, to goad us, to frighten us, to end this book the way you do? But I have just read this book again, and indeed Radtke pulls no punches; her work is as wonderful and heartbreaking the second time through. I'm still scooped out, but I'm still deeply grateful for the towering power of Radtke's vision. -Beth Kephart, Chicago Tribune

Remarkable. . . . a breathtaking mix of prose and illustration. -The Atlantic

A miracle and a masterpiece. -Electric Literature

Brilliant. . . . The book is a family drama, youthful romance, obsessive adventure, and karmic inquiry wrapped in a coming-of-age tale. It's [Radtke's] thumbnail history of left-behind people and places, and a wondrous panel-by-panel archive of the interplay between her rapacious intellect and her expansive imagination. . . . In places, the commingled pictorial and written narrative flows like a film, like a dreamscape, like the river of time itself. It's Radtke's quietly erudite, observant language . . . that grounds her intricate and dramatic drawings. But maps, photographs, medical charts, newspaper clippings, and a free-floating Sharpie embedded in the almost 300-page book enhance the storytelling as they surprise and delight. -Elle

In her exquisitely soul-, mind-, and heart-shattering debut graphic memoir, Kristen Radtke explores life's big questions surrounding grie