Books

A page from Work-Life Balance

Work-Life Balance by Aisha Franz review – richly comic takedown of the wellness industry | Comics and graphic novels

The three main characters in Work-Life BalanceAisha Franz’s mordantly funny new graphic novel, are connected by one woman: a therapist called Dr Sharifi, whose eyes, in time-long comic book fashion, can never be seen behind her round, outsize spectacles. Dr Sharifi dresses a bit like the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (AKA the princess of polka …

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Jonathan Rosen.

The Best Minds review – rich examination of madness and the way the west deals with it | Autobiography and memoir

For all the extraordinary advances in medical science seen in the past century, mental illness remains an area of conspicuous uncertainty. It’s perhaps a reflection of this doubt that three separate specialisms – neurology, psychiatry and psychology – contest overlapping areas of the field, and amid the confusion other disciplines such as philosophy and cultural …

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Simon James Green, author of the ‘timely’ Boy Like Me, photographed at home in south London

Young adult books roundup – reviews | Young adult

Clara Kumagai’s Catfish Rolling (Head of Zeus/Zephyr) is set in the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese earthquake, an event that has left strange pockets of fractured time around the country. Since losing her mother to the devastation, Sora has felt aimless and alone and when her grief-stricken father goes missing, she follows him into uncharted …

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