As far as semesters abroad go, few can rival the six months that writer and illustrator Andy Warner (Brief Histories of Everyday Objects) spent in Beirut in 2005. Spring Rain, the resulting illustrated memoir of his time in Lebanon, intertwines the country's violent upheaval in the wake of political assassinations with Warner's struggles to define his sexuality, his creative purpose and, as things progress, his own sanity.
As random car bombings plague the city amid social unrest, Warner's curiosity about his sexual orientation--as well as lingering angst over an ex-girlfriend--compound circumstances to a point where the author must question whether he has begun exhibiting symptoms of mental illness prevalent within his family. He uses a fairly realistic, unembellished drawing style to capture the essence of the friends, family, colleagues and strangers who populate his memoir in subtle but remarkable ways--be it the strategic crease of an eye or the slight slump of a shoulder. In other cases, it's the shading of bullet holes that mark a statue Warner visits in Beirut's Martyrs' Square.
Whether he's depicting the reality of a nation in revolt or the nightmare of a personal break from reality that threatens the possibility of tragic consequences, Warner's skills as a cartoonist serve both to offer the story cohesion and to ensure the (extremely helpful) passages on Lebanon's history aren't too dense. In total, Spring Rain is a timely work that never oversteps itself by narrowing its focus to provide a fleeting glimpse of revolutions both personal and political. --Zack Ruskin, freelance reviewer