‘Glass Half Empty’ Is The Most Powerful And Affecting Book You’ll Read This Year

Glass Half Empty deals with alcohol and how its effects run deep. Rachael Smith’s latest memoir, honest, truthful, and powerfully told will leave you in tears and will give you hope.

As has become the norm over her last several books, the first reading of Glass Half Empty had me in tears early on, then had me smiling through the tears, then hit me again with the tears, and again with the smiles, the tears, the smiles, the tears, the smiles – basically repeat until the final page. Then think about it all and have a damn good cathartic cry and go back and read it again. It’s a masterpiece. It’s that simple.

Straight off I’ll tell you this, I can’t imagine you’ll read anything more affecting in books or comics this year. Yeah, so I’m pre-disposed to enjoy her books, having fallen in line with her work pretty much from the beginning (and I’ll have no one tell me that the line, ‘It’s all pompoms and wool and shit’  in I am Fire isn’t one of the funniest things in comics ever), but Glass Half Empty is just a masterful work in the medium.

It sort of follows on from her previous three autobiographical works – Wired Up Wrong, Stand In Your Power, and Quarantine Comix in that we’re still with Rachael and her life – but it’s got a different spin, half looking at her relationship with her alcoholic dad, half looking at her own difficult relationship with alcohol. As with past books, she’s here with Barky (the manifestation of Rachael’s depression and anxiety) and Friendly (representing Rachael’s common sense and optimism), cutting in, helping her, hindering her, bringing her up, dragging her down, giving her a perfect visualisation for her mood.

Her artwork is simple yet so effective, there’s no line wasted here, nothing that doesn’t add to the essential push of the narrative. The simple layout of each square page adds to this, each page either a single panel, or two, or four. As a storyteller, there’s no one better than Rachael, her art and her writing combine perfectly, effortlessly, to say exactly what she wants. And she says it so well, in words and in art.

There’s also twin Rachael’s here, the young Rachael and the now Rachael, with the now Rachael there to comment on all the fucked up things young Rachael goes through thanks to her dad. Because her dad’s an alcoholic and he fucked young Rachael up in the way alcoholics do.

Now, whether you had an alcoholic parent or not, I’m pretty sure some of it will resonate with you in some way, you’ll find yourself identifying with Rachael somewhere along the way.

Maybe you’re her, maybe you’re her dad, maybe you’ve got friends or family who’ve been touched by the illness. Me? Well if anything I’m Rachael’s mum. Although I’d guess, at least from reading this version of events, that I’m nowhere near as nice as Rachael’s mum. But anyone that tells you alcohol hasn’t affected them in some way either doesn’t know the full facts or is out and out lying about it.

Me, well I’ve seen alcohol consume someone to the point where it’s painful and frustrating and fills you with anger and pain at everything it’s destroying. That’s why I was crying just a few pages into this. You? Well I reckon your tears will come at different points, but I’m pretty sure the tears will come somewhere along the way.

There’s such a power in Rachael’s writing. She digs deep into herself, her life, her memories, and she tells you the truth that it meant to her. And in doing that, she’s so honest and open that it means you can instantly see something of yourself and your relationships in here. That’s why those tears will come, they’re tears of recognition.

So yes, Glass Half Empty is a hard, painful read, but here’s where Rachael’s brilliance comes shining through, the darkness and pain is cut through with light and laughter. To be able to tell such a heartbreaking tale and still be able to inject levity and light with her perfectly timed comedy is just the work of a true comics great.

It’s masterful the way she finds comedy in almost everything she writes and draws, the comedic timing, as it’s always been in her work, is practically perfect. It cuts through the terrible things she’s telling you and it makes it palatable, makes it just that little bit better, you smile through the tears. And I thank her so much for that.

I also thank her for putting herself out there, again and again, to allow me and you to identify however we do here. And I thank her for the positivity in her work, the ceaseless message that it can get better, that it will get better, that it should get better. It does, it really does. I know it does, Rachael knows it does. And by the end, through the tears, you come out of it believing it will be better.

Trust me, Glass Half Empty is a sublime thing, full of truths, full of honesty and powerful emotions right there on every page. It’s wonderful, it’s beautiful, and it’s true. Writing this through tears I can tell you this will be a book of the year.

Glass Half Empty by Rachael Smith – published by Icon Books