This graphic novel is absolutely gorgeous. I love Pedrosa's drawing style and use of colour and given the large format of this book, they really shined here. Every single page is a treasure and full of so much beauty.

The story itself is told in three installments and is very humane. It's a story about family, who your relatives are and what you really know about them. And how you might not know much because your family hasn't wanted to keep in touch. At times I struggled to keep up with who is who as there are a lot of characters, but I enjoyed reading this nonetheless. It's amazing how you can feel the warmth and welcoming atmosphere and the loneliness and basically all the feelings Simon, the main character, feels. It's a real feat to put it all into pictures and words.

As for the translation, I loved the fact that the Portuguese wasn't translated into Finnish. (I'd assume it wasn't in the original French either.) It creates the perfect frustration and isolation and you can feel what Simon is feeling, in a mostly foreign place, not understanding the language - and gradually learning and connecting. (It does help if you know Spanish as you can guess a lot based on that.) I can imagine it throwing some readers off though because you're basically missing a lot of the story when you can't understand everything. But it's such a perfect choice.