Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > Walk Me to the Corner

Walk me to the corner is an enigmatically titled book about middle-aged romance.

I'm not looking for another
As I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner
Our steps will always rhyme--Leonard Cohen

This is a spoiled review.

A beautiful and and anguished graphic novel about Elise, happily married in her mid fifties, with two grown sons out of the house, who meets happily married Dagmar, who has two daughters and a wife. Unexpected, unsought attraction at first sight, an itch that must be scratched. They meet, Elise tells her husband, Dagmar tells her wife, they both love their spouses and don't know what to do about it, but it gets physical and Elise's initially supportive husband also turns to someone else. Hurt. But no real regrets. They want to be with their spouses and they want to be with each other. They know it is impossible. They know they can't "quit" each other easily. As they see it, they joke they are a Brokeback Mountain couple.

A tender, serious novel, beautifully and subtly illustrated by the author, Swedish Anneli Furmark, speaks honestly about the complexities of love. I thought as I read it about all the new categories of sexual identity by which you can associate yourself, and how that just might be more honest than the Kinsey Report detailed about how people who identify as straight are not usually straight all their lives. Elise loved men, and then met Dagmar. So now she's bi, we will say. But the older I get, the more people I know whose stories are more complicated than a single story. This graphic novel is sweet, sad, feels real and thoughtful, not provocative nor salacious. I care for each and every one of these people. Highly recommended, and a short read.