[Review] Anya's Ghost - Vera Brosgol

Title: Anya’s Ghost

Writer: Vera Brosgol

Publisher: Square Fish

Publication year: 2014

Language: English

Pages: 221

Anya is a Russian girl. Her family moves to America when she’s a kid. Growing up, she’s been having trouble fitting in. She’s used to being bullied for being fat and having an accent. As a result, she becomes a bitter teenager who doesn’t care about school and only has one friend. One day when she’s mad because she saw her crush with another girl, she ran to skip school. Then she fell down into a well where she found a skeleton in it. There, she also met the ghost of the skeleton who claimed that she’s a girl who’s murdered years ago. After getting help and able to get out of the well, Anya found part of the bone in her bag. With the bone, came along the ghost. Anya and the ghost then formed an unlikely friendship. But after a while, Anya found out that the ghost wasn’t who she told her to be.

I’d say that Anya’s ghost is a horror graphic novel. At first, I thought this graphic novel would be mild, kind of like Casper but it’s not. It’s darker and scarier than I thought it would be. As with most young adult book, this graphic novel centers on identity and trying to fit in. Most time, Anya tried so hard to fit in that she abandoned her roots. She’s ashamed of her Russian heritage to the point that she ignored people who actually cared about her. 

The art itself is simple and cartoonish. It’s colored in purple and grey shades, giving it a dark and somber ambiance. The beginning of the book has washed out purple color scheme and as the story getting darker the color scheme turns into shades of grey. Although subtle, it does add some effect to the reading experience.

In the end, Anya’s experience teaches us to not judge people from the appearance and to care more for people around us. Our life doesn’t end in high school, so try not to care a lot more than needed to be cool. To quote Anya, ‘impressing a bunch of snooty teenagers is a pretty lame life goal to have’. I recommend Anya’s Ghost if you’re trying to pick up graphic novel to read.