Sunday

A bored everyman does battle with the colossal enemy that is a dull Sunday in this epic mock-Proustian graphic novel from Belgian artist Schrauwen (Portrait of a Drunk). The narrative chronicles “one exemplary, lame day” in the life of Schrauwen’s real cousin, Thibault, who wakes up with vague ideas about getting things done. But no matter the task, whether it’s delivering the typeface design he is late on to an angry client or turning his garden into a greenhouse, procrastination and day-dreaming suck up hours. More pressing topics also occupy his mind, such as the threatened arrival of his party animal cousin Rik (“Hide your drugs,” Rik warns as he invites himself over) and the delayed return of his girlfriend, who has been working in Africa. But Thibault’s anxieties are largely self-created and low-stakes; erotic musings about an old crush land more as half-hearted fantasies than the desire for an affair. Any potential for evoking claustrophobia in the reader is warded off by quirky subplots (the imagined philosophical musings of a neighborhood cat, an irritable neighbor’s day drinking) and the cross-cutting between Thibault drunkenly slumbering through The Da Vinci Code on his couch while the people in his life prepare for his surprise birthday party, which caps the book in a seriocomic riff on It’s a Wonderful Life. Schrauwen’s clean white-and-blue sketch pad aesthetic is enlivened by strategic washes of pinks and reds. Any reader who’s ever wondered where the day went will take heart in this surprisingly touching and life-affirming portrait of indolence. (Oct.)