Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life
Ulli LustBack in 1984, a rebellious, 17-year-old, punked-out Ulli Lust set out for a wild hitchhiking trip across Italy, from Naples through Verona and Rome and ending up in Sicily. Twenty-five years later, this talented Austrian cartoonist has looked back at that tumultuous summer and delivered a long, dense, sensitive, and minutely observed autobiographical masterpiece.
Miraculously combining a perfect memory for both emotional and physical detail with the sometimes painful lucidity two and half decades’ distance have brought to her understanding of the events, Lust meticulously shows the who, where, when, and how (specifically, how an often penniless young girl can survive for months on the road) of a sometimes dangerous and sometimes exhilarating journey. Particularly haunting is her portrait of her fellow traveler, the gangly, promiscuous devil-may-care Edi who veers from being her spunky, funny best friend in the world to an out-of-control lunatic with no consideration for anything but her own whims and desires.
| status | checked out |
|---|---|
| genre | Adventure » Travel Stories |
| publisher | Fantagraphics |
| publish date | 2013 |
| popularity | checked out 13 time(s) |
TW: this book contains several depictions of awful men & rape.
As a person who was once a meek and shy teenager girl, I dreamed of being a badass. Being barely courageous enough to ride the city bus into town alone at seventeen, I never would’ve imagined at the time that it was possible to hitchhike across Europe with a sleeping bag and the clothes on my back. So of course I was totally engrossed by this story.
My feelings toward the book oscillated between fondness for Ulli and disgust for the way men treat her throughout the story. I began to feel protective of her and at times got upset with her for decisions, but overall was satisfied with the way she deals with each curve ball her travels throw at her.
A series of panels that really stood out to me showed Lust as a teenage girl walking off of a train. Men stare at her, and out of their eyes come billowing squiggly hands that grope her. Without any dialogue, she expresses feelings that many women suffer through every day.