Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story by Frederick Peeters

AIDS and HIV: words that are seen as death-sentences not diseases. They leave people wondering: How can life be hopeful? Can I still find love? Can life be positive? Frederik Peeters, a renowned young European comic artist, attempts to answer these questions in Blue Pills. It joins Alison Bechdel's Fun Home or Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis in the genre of comic-memoir. Whilst it is not as innovative as his forerunners, its dramatic force and bold and expressive drawing style allows Peeters to show difficult emotions without being schmaltzy. In Blue Pills Peeters exposes some of the most intimate parts of his relationship with his girlfriend and her 3-year-old son, who are both HIV positive. He spares the reader no details of the difficulties of day to day life. He includes: the conversation where the illness is revealed; the upset at the son becoming ill; his fear of contagion and his anxieties surrounding writing the comic when he isn't the one who's ill. So far, it sounds rather depressing. Yet he shares his 'silver-lining' moments too: his meetings with the kindly down-to-earth doctor who relieves his fears; love from his girlfriend's son; the discovery that illness brings critical reflection. Life can only be improvised. Blue Pills is an affecting and memorable comic-memoir because Peeters is willing to show the complexity of life. [Caroline Walters]