Dolores: a graphic novel that tears the soul, the review

Dolores

Of the life of an artist who died prematurely, one could analyze the details under the microscope, go hunting for the skeletons he hid in the closet, try to psychoanalyze him like Freud's experts. But no newspaper article, posthumous biography, no burning news about his past, will ever be able to bring out the real depth of pain that that person (because, even if we forget it, even the most famous artists are people) has experienced during his existence. . The story in images that Micol Arianna Beltramini and Francesca Ciregia make with their graphic novel Dolores is nevertheless this: a story, frank and sincere, without psychoanalytic or sensationalistic ambitions, of a life spent loving and suffering, creating and destroying, singing with the voice of an angel and scream your own pain. The life of Dolores O'Riordan, frontwoman of the band Cranberries, which runs through the pages of the graphic novel published by Edizioni BD, among the most famous songs of the Irish group, the crucial events and the now sadly notorious death of Dolores, which took place in 2018. Here's why reading Dolores.

Dolores: a song lasting a lifetime

Dolores is not then a simple homage, but a story that had to be told, frank and honest, devoid of sensationalism or morbid interest in certain details. And Micol Arianna Beltramini and Francesca Ciregia have accomplished in this an undertaking that certainly must not have been easy, but that through the graphic novel acquires all the strength that a different medium probably would not have been able to attribute, thanks to the story in images. It is perceived throughout the work, from the choice of an "internal" narrator to the facts to the use of images that are more evocative than explicit, in a single penetrating as a blade, although sensitive and delicate like that same voice by Dolores O ' Riordan that almost seems to hear on every page with each quoted passage.

And it's making me sad - Because I can't be with you

Ciregia's sharp and deep inks draw in Dolores a story that has an authentic though bitter flavor, thanks also to the great realism infused in the figures and faces. This is the sign not only of the in-depth study that the authors must have made regarding the personal history of Dolores O'Riordan and that of the Cranberries in general, but also of the artistic one done in portraying with genuineness the traits and expressions typical of the protagonists. . We see Dolores O'Riordan among the tables and she is absolutely unmistakable, assuming the features almost of a goddess in the evocative cover image that undoubtedly incorporates the singer-songwriter in her golden robes in Zombie.





Few are the artistic licenses that the authors have inserted in Dolores, yet they work without resonating like out of place notes: the doctor with whom O'Riordan confides in the last pages, the frightening clowns aboard the plane on which the singer-songwriter travels, but above all the figure of an unknown boy who accompanies her and hugs her in the most desolating moments. A fictitious figure, which we do not know if she ever really existed in Dolores' life, but who in this graphic novel becomes an essential component, almost an analogous and complementary reflection of her that takes on too great a pain to be carried by a only person.

A pain that, although it should be stronger if outlined by black in our imagination, is instead sharpened in the few color plates on which all the power of emotions explodes: Dolores in the Zombie video clip, the house on fire in the woods, Salvation's clown, the angelic figure of the singer-songwriter dressed in white and with a crown of flowers on her head as in the Animal Instinct video clip. Reacting enthusiastically to the graphic novel Dolores is then inevitable, thanks to a narrative that if in words clearly tells the story of a life spent loving and hating each other, singing and suffering, in the figures it evokes images that the written word would not be able to communicate. br>




Dolores is definitely a graphic novel that Cranberries fans will love and in which they will find a heroine lost too soon, never misunderstood or put on display, but dotted with extreme sensitivity. However, we also recommend reading to those who have never listened to the Cranberries or to those who do not know the story of Dolores, to let themselves be carried away in this tumult of emotions that will certainly remain etched in the memory, like those who are no longer there but have left a mark. indelible.