Bodies fail us before our souls do, explains Mediterranea’s narration in “Blossoms in Autumn.” She is a former model, now in her early 60’s, she runs her family’s cheese shop. Examining herself in the mirror in a double page spread, the art flows between wrinkled and sagging parts of her naked body, she has lost control of it. She feels like the wicked witch that scared her as a child. Meanwhile, Ulysses doesn’t yet feel his body’s frailty, forced into early retirement as the removal company he worked at for most of his life downsizes, it is his mind that starts to falter as his days lose the structure. When they meet, their romance is sweet, open, and reinvigorating.
Written by ZidrouCover by Aimée de Jongh
Art by Aimée de Jongh
Translated by Matt Madden
Ulysses is a 59-year-old widower who, since retiring, has been in the grip of loneliness. The former removals man is without direction or purpose. He can’t even find solace in the company of his children: his daughter is dead, his son consumed by work.
62-year-old Mrs Solenza is a former model. Once a magazine cover star, she now runs the family business: a cheese shop owned by her late mother. She, too, is alone.
Two lives drift sadly by, inching ever closer to old age. Until, one day, they collide – and an emotional earthquake happens. A unique collaboration between veteran comics writer Zidrou and rising star Aimée de Jongh, Blossoms in Autumn is a masterful exploration of growing old and falling in love.
The visuals of the ageing bodies of our couple are palpable, we feel their aches and creases and their moments of vibrancy, they are living. Aimée de Jongh’s style is infinitely inviting with its borderless panels and characters rendered like a cleaner Lemire, it is easy to fall into these lives just from glancing at the page. Where it becomes harder to fall into is when you start reading the words, both Ulysses and Mediterranea have their own internal monologues that tend to be a little over written. It’s like Zidrou is desperately trying to find some specificity and literary motifs, rather than trusting the story and the characters. The dialogue and narration end up feeling a little awkward and out of step with the quiet confidence of the art.
This speaks to the biggest tension that I see in the quality of “Blossoms in Autumn;” between the eyes of a young woman artist, and the anxious view of an ageing male writer. The more I think about some of the choices made in this story, the more male gaze driven they appear. De Jongh’s art treats both their bodies neutrally; we get full nude shots of them both, including his penis, which I quite appreciated because penises are often obscured in a way that women’s genitals wouldn’t be.
But Zidrou’s story is so much more preoccupied with Mediterranea’s body. Her value in the world of the book seems to stem from her body. Her earlier career as a model, to her comparing her body to the witch from Snow White, to a bizarre ending that I’m pretty sure (and the book somewhat acknowledges this) is medically impossible. Her body’s value comes from the traditional places, as a thing for men to be attracted to and as a baby factory. She feels like she has lost these and therefore is having a crisis of self. “Blossoms” had the opportunity here to question these sources of value. Mediterranea’s arc could have gone ‘I was taught these are the things that make me valuable, how can I find value without them?’ but instead, it decides to redeem her body within the terms of the male gaze. Around half way through this redemption is teased when, a decade post-menopause, she gets a period that is clearly triggered by a kiss with Ulysses. Being sexually desired and reproductively capable are inextricably linked and are the heart of her arc.
At least she has an arc though, which is more than Ulysses has. It took me a while to realise this, but he doesn’t face any real conflict. At the start he is lonely, he meets Mediterreanea, he gets all the things he wants with no challenge. Despite this, he ends up feeling more like the protagonist. By the end of the book, Mediterreanea’s voice seems to disappear (even though the only drama in the ending stems from her body). “Blossoms” started by framing itself as a meditation on the anxieties of ageing but it becomes almost exclusively about gratifying Ulysses’s desires. I don’t think it is entirely unreasonable to point out that Zidrou and Ulysses are close in age and look fairly similar.
The more I think about “Blossoms in Autumn,” the more problematic it becomes. It is a book structured around the male gaze, but that is great at masking it. It’s masked by de Jongh’s gorgeous, objective pen. It’s masked by a second act of loving, ernest romance that makes you root for the book. It’s masked by what seems an honest interest in the challenges of ageing bodies, but that just ends up confirming tired, patriarchal ideas of women’s bodily value.
The critical consensus around this book is largely quite positive, and I do agree with most of what I have seen said about it. “Blossoms in Autumn” is sweet and caring, it is beautiful to look at, it is nice to see a sexually active later in life romance portrayed in all its intimacies. But when you get down to what it’s saying, I think the thematic drive is unavoidably one of male gaze and male gratification. And that is a shame; there are the bones of something more than that here, but the flesh on those bones is decaying and barely visible.
