Ulla Donner: Spleenish

Author: Ulla Donner
Finnish original: Spleenish
Publisher: Schildts & Söderströms, 2017
Genre: graphic novel
Number of pages: 80 pp.
Reading material: Swedish original

Generation Y in the riptide of incredible opportunities and impossible expectations.

For a young, promising person the world is full of opportunities: interdisciplinary projects, zines, photography, curating a food blog and a knitting blog, working on the defining novel of your generation.

But what if you’d rather wallow in self-pity at home in your underwear? Why should you do this and that?

Spleen stands for brooding gloom, melancholia, listlessness, boredom. Spleenish is a mood for Generation Y: everything is easy and uncertain, all the time. Other people are smarter, slimmer, more accomplished.

Ulla Donner’s autobiographical graphic novel meditates on what stands in the way of becoming a new person with infinite possibilities. It was nominated for the Graphic Novel Finlandia Prize and awarded with the Society of Swedish Authors in Finland debut prize in 2018.

It is nearly impossible to read Ulla Donner’s Spleenish without thinking about the TV series Girls. The brilliance of Spleenish is closely related to what was exceptional in Girls: both of them are sharp, compassionate portraits of our time, both are laced with scathing criticism.
– Hufvudstadsbladet newspaper

Also available:
Crap (2019)

About the author:
Ulla Donner