Every teenager's life is more horrible than every other teenager's, or at least it feels that way. In Anya's Ghost, Vera Brosgol shows us the world of Anya Borzakovskaya, a Russian immigrant living in New York State with her mother and brother. In the midst of her struggles with high school, love, body image, and assimilation, she finds herself friends with the ghost of a young girl. Brosgol pulls from her own experience as a young immigrant and translates it into a story that is accessible by all readers.
The character of Anya is very well-defined. She's not a two-dimensional "good girl" who is put upon by external forces. In her effort to fit in and be liked, Anya sometimes breaks the rules and hurts those around her. Torn between her perceptions of what's right and what's cool, she frequently ends up miserable, just like a real teenager.
When Anya finds herself at a house party, her discomfort is palpable. She's not breezing through as if it were just another location for dialogue; she's in over her head, out of her safety zone. It's this kind of complexity that the author brings to the story.
It's obvious that Brosgol spent a lot of time developing the character and personality of her protagonist. The scenes in Anya's room are filled with details that comprise the girl's life. The contents of her walls and desk are carefully placed, and it feels as though Brosgol could explain exactly what everything is.
Brosgol deals with several important themes in this Young Adult book, but in a way that makes them almost subliminal. She doesn't preach her message, but lets it play out on the page.
Anya's struggle with her body image is something that doesn't appear often in comics, but should. She worries about her weight and size, afraid of looking like her mother, who is quite comfortable with herself. There's no message, just an awareness without judging. This is just the way young people often feel.
Miss Borzakovskaya has also spent a great deal of effort to seem "American," losing her accent and cultivating the right clothing. There is a delicate balance between honoring one's heritage and adopting a new culture, which is hard enough without adding the difficulty of high school society. Anya avoids all ties to her background, including recent immigrant Dima and her mother's tales of "back in Russia." The last thing she wants is to stand out for being different.
Anya's Ghost is filled with characters using each other for their own purposes, out of desperation or desire. Anya finds the ghost to be "useful," but takes seventy pages to ask her name. In the same way, the ghost uses Anya to experience her stolen youth. Although readers may not have ghosts to interact with, everyone has been on one side or the other in an uneven relationship.
Tying in to the isolation of youth and the need to fit in is the mistaken assumption that no one else has problems. Anya, dealing with her own issues, sees Liz's life as perfect, but as she points out later, "you don't know what's going on in anyone else's head." It's easy to hate another person until they are revealed to be just as troubled as you, and Brosgol's treatment of this fact is letter-perfect. The wordless panels as Anya walks away from Liz at the party speak volumes.
Brosgol's art is full of expression, taking some cues from manga in the character's reactions. She stays relatively simple, using clear lines for her characters, but including detailed backgrounds. Her depiction of the woods, for example, is remarkable and intricate.
The toning in Anya's Ghost adds deep dimension to the black and white illustration. It's clear that Liz's eyes are blue even without color. The page layouts are consistent enough that when Brosgol opens up a full-page spread, it really stands out.
Vera Brosgol has made a very worthy debut with Anya's Ghost, a brilliant ghost story that also happens to accurately portray the troubles of being a teenager.
Anya's Ghost is being released on June 7th by First Second, and Brosgol will be at Floating World Comics on the 8th for the book's release party.
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