The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man

As an indie comic book store owner – and the heir to a fortune – Philippe lives a life that straddles the real world and fiction. Struggling with mental illness, he relies on his wife Marilyne and a groundbreaking drug his father developed. FINALIST FOR THE 2024 PAGE TURNER AWARDS FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED HANGDOG SOULS As an independent comic book store owner and the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, Philippe Favrier lives a life that straddles the real world and the realm of fiction. Struggling with mental illness, Philippe relies on his wife, Marilyne – a successful surgeon with her own haunting secrets – and a groundbreaking drug his father developed. Bound by their shared pain, they navigate their haunted lives, forever shadowed by the heart-rending loss of their baby, Antoine. Their fragile world begins to crumble when Philippe catches a disturbing glimpse of an unfamiliar profile in the mirror. And his uneasiness is further fueled by an anonymous comic strip that arrives at his store, featuring a character bearing an eerie resemblance to him. Is Marilyne hiding an affair? Is she connected to the comic strip that's tormenting him? As he probes deeper, Philippe is drawn into a web of deception, where the lines between reality and imagination blur – until his investigations into Marilyne and the malicious comic artist at last reveal the tragic truth. PRAISE FOR HANGDOG SOULS 'The absorbing winter escape of a read that I had been seeking' -Prashanth Gopalan, Strange Horizons 'Riddled with mysteries, the darkest of human emotions, and it is a book that will instigate curiosity, yet send a shiver down your spine each moment you turn a page' -India Today 'I find the astonishing stories collected -- and arranged chronologically by historical era -- to be consistently enthralling, amazing, and powerful. They are beautifully written and filled with both sharp characterizations of conflicted, complicated people and rich, multi-layered detail about the states, landscapes, history, and lingering myths of southern India. . . . I recommend Hangdog Souls heartily to all thoughtful readers who long to be immersed in a fulsomely realized world that skillfully combines very old mythologies and phenomenally new reflections on what they can still mean' -Jerrold E. Hogle, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of English, University of Arizona 'A complex and wildly ambitious novel which makes no apologies for bringing together contrasting genres and influences - from historical fiction to the Gothic, from intergenerational family drama to "realist" fiction, from supernatural horror to sci-fi, all infused with elements of philosophy, myth and spiritualism and conveyed in rich and beautiful prose' -Ends of the World