Slippery Slope

The most striking quality of the illustration in this piece is the downward sloping of everything: noses, shoulders, jackets, faces, which after a time has the cumulative effect of making me feel slightly depressed.

Despite the color, and the laughter drawn in the goofy groups of coeds in the dorms, the direction of the lines weighs heavily;  when these characters lift their chins up even a bit, it looks almost painful.

 The brightest point in the story is the time recalled in hindsight --when the narrator believed Harriet's stories, and their friendship thrived. The colors are bright and simple: the matching sweaters and skirts of primary school are, fittingly, red.   The story almost implies that the disbelief of others, the inability to share her story/identity/truth,  killed Harriet.   The sudden switching from the whole body of Lucy  to an empty lot makes me feel, well,  like an empty lot.   (And hey, any art majors-- doesn't this look like a weirdly self annihilating face down Chagall lover flying in the air? with the night sky pillow and the bed covers like clouds? --)

Throughout the rest of the story, before and after, in the dorm, and in the midst of Harriet's odd behavior and then aftermath of her disappearance, the artist swaps Lucy and Harriet in and out of the panels in a loose and unexplained way, that creates a feeling of disorientation and disassociation. Perhaps it is the lack of connection that I find depressing.

The story is about a failure of friendship.  As Lucy and Harriet grow apart,  Lucy finds happiness in not believing the stories that Harriet tells herself to cope with the loss of her mother.  After Harriet's disappearance disbelief becomes inadequate, (it is its own kind of absence, even though it makes room for the new)  as she finds herself surrounded by people, but suffering the loss of one person who captivated her wholly.

The final frame offers some kind of resolution, Harriet's face is uplifted without the usual tension --and the narrator reclaims some identity from the act of entertaining a belief.