At the time, I referred to her as "a cartoonist resident in Sweden, of Hungarian-Polish ancestry" and noted that she seemed to work in English. She might not be making comics, but she seems to still be in Sweden, and still making art - paintings and jewelry, these days. I don't want to say art is art - I like to see narrative work, and have a bias in that direction - but it's great to see artists having what looks like a reasonably sustainable career, making the things they want to.
Graylight is an allusive, imagistic book, colored out to the edge of the pages in tones that look just a bit desaturated to my eye - a unique, particular palette surrounding and supporting Nowak's complex lines and complicated page structures. Lines defining people sometimes fade out or end unexpectedly, while objects - especially thematically important ones, seem to be closer to the surface of the page and shown in more detail.
The underlying story isn't as complex as the way Nowak tells it: there's a young woman, Sasha, in this unnamed village that we assume is somewhere in Sweden. She's a bit flighty and self-centered: we see her with her friends and meeting a reporter, Erik, in town to interview a famous reclusive author, Aurora, who lives in the woods nearby.
Sasha impulsively - we think she does everything impulsively; she's that kind of young person - goes along with Erik as his "photographer," though we don't see her holding a camera at any point. Aurora and her grown son Edmund are not happy there's someone else with Erik for the interview, so Sasha flounces off, but not before (impulsively) stealing a book from Aurora's house.
Sasha, over the next few days, starts a no-strings relationship with Erik - this somewhat frustrates him, since he wants more.
There's also something of a curse that starts to hit her, in ways Nowak presents almost entirely imagistically. Aurora knows she has stolen the book, and believes Sasha has the same kind of power she does - she's a witch, more or less, and calls on two others like her to make the traditional trinity to call down her curse on Sasha.
There's also what the book description calls a love triangle - Edmund hangs around, watching Sasha during the days before the curse comes on - but it's not entirely clear if he's in love with her, fascinated with her as an example of the outside world he's unfamiliar with, or just keeping an eye on her for his mother. In any case, he eventually comes to see her, as the curse starts affecting her more strongly, and retrieves the book and breaks the curse (these may be the same action).
Again, Nowak tells this story through gesture - drawn in an idiosyncratic way - and allusive dialogue and imagistic pictures, rather than by explaining in any detail. It's a visually fascinating book, full of striking images, with a story that I suspect different readers will take in somewhat different ways.
So many comics are easily pigeon-holed; it's refreshing to find one as specific and different, in both style and substance, as this one.
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