Lucy Sullivan confronts the grief that hounds us in Barking

THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER-FREE.

by Kate Kowalski. In folklore around the world, the black dog is a terrible omen, a portent of death. Anyone who sees one cross their path should brace themselves for the worst.

In Lucy Sullivan’s Barking, the black dog symbolizes grief, the gnawing, devouring kind. It is a menace the main character, Alix, has been trying to outrun for a year. The dog is a shapeshifter, leaking into the panels, flowing around the page, a great shadow — ever-present, mocking, hounding, not allowing a moment’s peace. In her attempt to flee this thing, Alix lands in a mental ward.

She’s been “sectioned,” as they call it in the UK, and must follow proper protocol to be released. As expected, this ward features interesting characters, each with their own problems and unique perspectives. Alix navigates the varying attitudes inside her new surroundings and the agendas of the staff in charge of her care.

Per the book’s postscript, Sullivan explains that this story is a confessional, borne out of her own experience with the death of a close one. It’s meant to cast a light on the issues of grief and mental illness. But it’s also meant to be an indictment of the “umbrella approach” to mental health treatment provided by the NHS. The flavor of this ward does skew a bit One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but overall proves to be a much less sadistic experience. As an American, this is where I disengage with the story a bit. I have no doubt that the NHS has a whole slew of problems and inefficiencies. But at least in Britain there is a place for the mentally unwell to go besides jail or prison.

That said, Barking is still a powerful and unique depiction of combatting grief and guilt while stripped of autonomy. Sullivan’s art is the powerhouse here, conveying a fraying and convoluted state of mind through sketched and grainy lines unraveling over the page. Panels, when they occur, are organic, loosely drawn things meant to provide a loose structure to the sequence of events, nothing more. Sullivan explodes past lines, boxes, and other such boundaries. The shading can become dark with weight and pressure — signifying the dark blot of the Dog, the underside of a bridge, deep water. Her characters are cloaked in shadow, fading in and out like shades emerging from the underworld.

The words themselves are an extension of Sullivan’s style. Sketched within speech balloons, they can often confuse the page — who is saying what? Alix? The ward nurses? The Dog? They spill freely from these balloons onto the page in a frantic scrawl, devolving into overlapping scribbles and white noise. The lettering itself is impactful — hollow, breezy characters that allow space for the page to breathe. Sullivan credits Dan Berry in her acknowledgments for creating this incredible font.

The most moving artistic choice is the bleeding of the past into the present. Alix revisits a tragic event and watches it play out on the floor of her wardroom. A ward nurse gives Alix counseling: “It’s the past but you drag it around. Make it part of you,” he says, his own quiet agonies playing out in a scene around his head. Sullivan manages to put on paper two realms at once, two layers of perception.

As we take in the world around us, we are always inhabiting two spaces: the real physical space and the mental space of memories and associations that inform our reaction to that physical world. In Barking, they both become tangible things, playing and interacting with each other in a revelatory way.

Sullivan’s Barking is tangible and filled with profound empathy. It’s a labor of love, a years-long effort to render those complicated tangles of pain and loss into something shareable, understandable — not just clinically but in a visceral, deeply felt way. Maybe there is a black dog hanging around us that never goes away. But dogs can be trained. Barking is an exercise in getting that dog to heel.

8.5 out of 10

Barking is available now. For ordering information, click this.

Avery Hill Publishing / £16.99 / $21.56
Created by Lucy Sullivan.

Check out this 4-page preview of Barking, courtesy of Avery Hill Publishing: