Juliette: or, the Ghosts Return in the Spring

A vibrant tableau of small-town life as seen through the eyes of a woman returning home from Paris.

Juliette boards a train from Paris and comes back to her hometown hoping for a low-key visit with family and old friends. What she finds is anything but. Her sister, a caregiver and mother of two, is carrying on an elaborate affair with a man from a costume shop. Her parents, separated, are now estranged. Father is sure he’s developing Alzheimer’s, though it’s more likely that he’s simply getting old. Mother, on the other hand, revels in the second act of her life as a free woman, an artist with a show at their local gallery to prove it. Slowly, Juliette finds herself entangled with the unlikely Georges, a dyspeptic alcoholic who is stuck in his life. These divergent paths inevitably cross against a gloriously painted backdrop of eccentric small-town living.

Camille Jourdy’s beautiful watercolor pages provide an unfeigned mileu for the subtle dramedy at hand in Juliette. All too real human emotions, bittersweet and relatable in their rawness, come together to form a poetic realism.

Camille Jourdy grew up in Dole, near the Jura Mountains in France. She studied at the Beaux-Arts d’Epinal in Lorraine before heading for the École des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg. She has authored and illustrated a number of award-winning graphic novels such as Rosalie Blum (Angoulême Prix Révélation, Prix RTL) and Les Vermeilles (Angoulême Fauve Jeunesse).