"The Inflatable Woman"

Rachael Ball is a cartoonist and a teacher. The Inflatable Woman, her first graphic novel, was a Guardian Best Graphic Book of 2015.

Ball applied the Page 69 Test to The Inflatable Woman and reported the following:

Page 1 is pretty representative of the meaning of the book:

'Last Night as I was sleeping, I dreamt-marvellous error!- that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making combs and sweet honey from my old failures.' Antonio Machado

The book examines what you do when you think you may have little time left in the world and how you deal with missed opportunities.

Chapter 7, home of page 69, combines several themes of the book: The fantasy of Iris' internet dating conversations with Sailor Buoy, the darkness and magical realism of some of Iris' fears of death, the humour of some of the characters such as Iris' relationship with Granma Suggs who is almost a Mrs Malaprop in that she says kind of inappropriate things at the wrong moment and the dark humour of Dr Magic and his surgical implant options!

Visit Rachael Ball's website.

--Marshal Zeringue