Calvin: A Novel

**Disclaimers: I have met Martine in person and spoken with her about some of the topics in this book, once before reading it and once after, and honestly I love this woman so much. She’s such a wonderful human being, and knowing her makes me want to read her books even more, so there are probably any number of biases that have worked their way into this review, but I honestly think that, even without knowing Martine and the care she put into this book, I would have enjoyed it just as much, and I’m pretty sure you will too. So, the short version of this review is: It’s amazing. Go read it. Right now. Why are you still reading this. Go read CALVIN. CALVIN is a shorter novel, with the hardback clocking in at 181 pages—I read it in two sittings, I believe, and the only reason it didn’t happen in one is because I had somewhere to be. It’s structured as a letter to Bill Waterson, the creator of the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, with the letter being composed by Calvin, the main character. Calvin has schizophrenia and is a maladaptive daydreamer, and after suffering a stress-induced breakdown, begins seeing things, including his old stuffed tiger, Hobbes, and gets the idea in his head that if he visits Bill Waterson, all will be well again, and so he starts walking across the frozen surface of Lake Erie, accompanied by his best friend Susie… who may or may not be real. There are two main things that I love most about this book. The first one is that, as readers, we don’t know which of the things that Calvin is describing to Bill (and to us) are real and which ones are actually hallucinations. Calvin treats and interacts with everything that he meets in the exact same way—he assumes they are all hallucinations, but interacts with them like they are real. The biggest one is Hobbes—there can’t REALLY be a giant talking tiger, but what if there is? And even if there isn’t, what if what it’s saying is still worth listening to? What if it’s our brain trying to communicate with us in the only way it knows how? The same thing goes for the format of the book—the letter to Mr. Waterson. You’d assume that because it’s a letter to someone, you have to survive to write the letter, right? But what if the narrative structure is just Calvin’s way of getting through things? What if he’s talking to Bill Waterson the same way he’s talking to Hobbes? I honestly wasn’t sure until I got to the end, and I won’t spoil which one it was. Go find out yourself. :) The other thing I love about this book is the depiction of schizophrenia. I myself am autistic, and while schizophrenia and autism are two different balls of wax, they occasionally share toys and could be said to live on the same street of generally neurodivergent brain structures. I’ve seen a lot of bad and uncomfortable things come up in the realm of neurodivergent representation in books and movies, and I was a bit nervous going into this, even after I met Martine and was amazed by how sweet and kind she was. When I opened the book for the first time, I kept saying “oh please be good, oh please be good, oh please be good, oh please oh please oh please oh….” And yes. Just, yes. The description of Calvin’s breakdown, as well as his way of explaining things in the strangest possible terms (at one point he is trying to explain some complex emotions, and he ends up falling back on “Okay, so in neuroscience…” which was just cute and totally a thing I can see myself doing and just yes) really hit home for me. There are a few really intense moments, because frozen Lake Erie crossing. In particular, there’s a moment where Calvin is panicking and trying to do the right thing, but it doesn’t work because his brain is feeding him the wrong information. And it made my heart hurt for him. I can’t remember if my eyes started crying, but my brain did.

The writer is not being creative and what he is doing is turning the best comic strip of all time in to a bad book and I know what a good book is and Calvin and Hobbes has books to so would you rather read a calvin and Hobbes book or a ripe of

This is a short but charming book that will bring you feelings of nostalgia and hope and remind you of some of the fears and feelings we all have about life.