Review: "Pardalita" by Joana Estrela

Pardalita by Joana Estrela
Translated by Lyn Miller-Lachmann
English edition published March 2023 via Em Querido
★★★★

This quiet story follows Raquel, a teenager, through a season of life in her small Portuguese town. Raquel is on the cusp of everything: of being catapulted out of high school and into whatever is beyond it, of moving beyond her small town where everyone knows everywhere, of figuring out who and what she wants to be. And then there's Pardalita, a girl a year or so older who captures Raquel's attention in ways Raquel can't quite bring herself to admit to.

My favorite thing about this is, far and away, the mixed use of art and prose here. Sometimes the book takes the shape of a graphic novel, with fairly simple, straightforward black-and-white drawings, but just as often it falls into a page or two of prose, or prose poetry, as Raquel ruminates on either the current world around her or little vignettes from childhood that influence how she thinks about the world now. The art's not my go-to style (for preference, I guess I lean toward something more lush), but it's clean in a way that makes me twitch to pick up a pen and try to imitate it (I can't draw worth beans, but sometimes, if a drawing is straightforward enough, I can make a reasonable facsimile—if I could draw well enough to make comics, I'd be over the moon).

I suspect this will be fairly hit or miss with readers: it's a quiet story, understated, without a lot of dramatics. I'd have loved to know a bit more about Pardalita and what Raquel sees in her, because to me she's sort of...anywoman? anygirl? And yet I know exactly what Raquel means when she can't help but want to be near Pardalita all the time, when it's almost a relief that Pardalita will be leaving for Lisbon in a few months, because proximity makes the pull that much stronger.

This is one of several graphic novels translated into English that I've read recently, and I'm loving the differences—sometimes just small things, like the shape of the buildings in the background, but also perhaps a difference in the way the story is put together compared to the bulk of the (American) graphic novels I've read. 3.5 stars and would happily read more.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a free review copy through NetGalley.