Graphic Novel Review: Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

Posted on January 16, 2024 at 7:12 am by Gene Ambaum

Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki. Drawn & Quarterly, 2023. 9781770464339. 444pp.

It’s 2009. Zoe and Dani meet up for a freshman spring break trip to New York City. Fiona, Dani’s friend from her dorm, goes along. Zoe has a new very short haircut and does not like to talk about herself. Fiona seems more concerned with being cool and drinking and not being seen as a tourist than anything else. Dani is the one with guidebooks and an agenda that includes her friends, buying a bunch of postcards, and visiting a ton of museums. After they check into their hostel, they have pizza and wander to Times Square and then a bar. It’s a great sequence that includes them paying for a photo (oops) and Fiona epically telling off a guy in a bar. But then cut to day two, where things start to feel weird, it becomes clear which of them is the third wheel, and it seems like two of them are on their way to hooking up. Awkward. (It’s a perfect distillation of that moment of not quite feeling at home at a four-year school while still pining for / trying to figure out the place of older friends in one’s life, in light of growing up a bit and starting to move on.)

Things I love: Law & Order coffee, every page set in the Natural History Museum, and the horny pigeons on the title page that stand as a warning to any library person who opens this: THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU PUT THIS IN THE YA SECTION.

It’s one of my favorite books of the year. As soon as I return this to the library, I’m buying several copies to give as gifts.

Here’s a great interview with the Tamakis conducted by Jesse Thorn, on his show Bullseye about the book and more. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1197954636/jillian-mariko-tamaki