Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow

This is the most romantic book I’ve read all year. The fact that it is a true story makes it that much more heartbreaking. Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow is the love story between Anders Nilsen and his fiancĂ©e Cheryl Weaver. Told through letters, photographs, postcards and drawings exchanged between the young couple throughout their relationship, the reader discovers that Weaver has cancer and tragically dies in November 2005. What I loved were the imperfections and flaws of the graphic novel. Written in Nilsen’s own chicken scratch handwriting, I adored how he scratched out spelling mistakes into little black blocks. It was these flaws that made the story more humanistic and vulnerable. Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow is a tender momento of a couple’s existence together. Nilsen’s final words to his dead lover ache as he slips her ashes into the sea. The most beautiful words are the ones that speak from the heart. This book not only spoke, it made my heart swell open and spill out. It kills. (Erin Kobayashi)

by Anders Nilsen, Cheryl Weaver, $15.96, 86 pgs, Drawn and Quarterly, P.O.Box 48056, Montreal, QC, H2V 4S8, drawnandquarterly.com