I discovered this book existed at a moment laden with coincidence. I was in a comic book store in Berlin — my first time there. The store had only a small selection of graphic novels in English. But the proprietor was very kind and I was there on Halloween long enough to witness him giving comic books to all the trick-or-treaters. He didn’t bat an eyelash at the one child who left the store complaining to their parent “But I don’t even LIKE comic books!” I also heard a young boy ask him something in German (which I didn’t understand) to which he laughingly replied something like “you can try it” and the boy promptly put a corner of the comic book in his mouth. Anyway, I wanted to support his store, and I am a fan of Ryan North, and Kurt Vonnegut, of course, so I supposed I would read this the next day, when I planned to be on a train for much of the day.

But I ended up not taking the train from Berlin to Milan, opting for a (surprisingly less expensive) half-hour flight instead. So I only read a bit of it in the hotel, and only just finished it several weeks later. It gave me a sense of unease that definitely reminded me of reading the original novel. I don’t really think I need to revisit this story again, but I have no regrets.