Review: "I Felt Myself Slipping" by Ray Nadine

I Felt Myself Slipping by Ray Nadine
Published September 2024 via Oni Press
★★★

It's the mid-1990s, and there's a new girl at Station Six Gymnastics. Kota is intrigued—and she's even more intrigued when she learns that Riley, the new girl, is Deaf, and that the best way to communicate will be to learn sign language. But Riley, who's struggling with recent loss, isn't so sure that she wants to make new friends, to let new people in.

Despite not even being able to turn a cartwheel (it's on my bucket list, so maybe someday), I have a high level of curiosity about gymnastics, and this was a no-brainer of a read for me. There's a fair amount going on in the story: Kota and Riley are both competitive gymnasts, but they aren't sure if their skill will take them as far as they want to go; Riley is dealing with grief and making new connections; Kota has a fall early on and has a hard time regaining her confidence on a particular apparatus. I wish we saw a bit more of Riley in particular outside gymnastics, as even she doesn't seem to know who she is outside the gym. I love how much Sign we see, though, and how willing Kota is to go outside her comfort zone.

The art is not really my style: the cover image should give you a good idea of what's inside, but the art reads as 'comic' rather than 'graphic novel' to me, and it took me a while to figure out where the characters were supposed to fit in the world because Kota has the visual and emotional energy of a twelve-year-old boy. (I didn't check out any of Nadine's earlier work before reading this, which is probably just as well; although the lines are the same, I think this is likely a rather gentler story than some of their other work.) That said, art style is highly subjective, and I'm guessing that most readers will not have my same specific preferences there!

I'm curious about the choice to set this in the mid-90s: I'm guessing that that's because that's the period of competitive gymnastics that Nadine knows best, but I'm fascinated by the casualness with which Kota's teammates tease her about possibly having a crush on a girl—I mean, in the mid-90s I was still at an age to be working out things like writing all the letters in my name the right way around, and I didn't know what the word 'lesbian' meant (heard it for the first time in about...1999?), but I'm now super curious about how many could-be-queer teens (I Felt Myself Slipping is a friendship book, not a romance) had that sort of cheerful acceptance in that time period.

One to appeal to those interested in gymnastics, obviously; your art-style mileage may vary but it was a fun read.

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