Roaming

by Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki

Spring break, 2009. High school best friends Zoe and Dani are now freshman college students, meeting in a place they’ve wanted to visit forever: New York City. Tagging along is Dani’s classmate Fiona, a mercurial art student with an opinion on everything. Together, the three cram in as much of the city as possible, gleefully falling into tourist traps, pondering so-called great works of art, sidestepping creeps, and eating lots and lots of pizza (folded in half, of course). Roaming is a ground-breaking graphic novel from the authors behind New York Times bestseller and Caldecott Honor Book This One Summer.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, LGBT, Queer, Fiction, Young Adult, Graphic Novels Comics

443 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2023

About the author

Jillian Tamaki is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Toronto. A professional artist since 2003, she has worked for publications around the world and taught extensively in New York at the undergraduate and graduate level. She is the co-creator, with her cousin Mariko Tamaki, of Skim and This One Summer, the latter of which won a Caldecott Honor in 2015. She is the author of the graphic novels SuperMutant Magic Academy, originally a serialized webcomic, and Boundless, a collection of short comic stories for adults. Her first picture book, They Say Blue, was released in 2018.

Reviews

[Jack Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gorgeously illustrated graphic novel which perfectly captures the vibe of a group holiday that doesn't go to plan. Sometimes you realise you just can't travel with certain people... on day 1 of a trip... and now you're stuck with them.

Dani and Zoe have been friends since adolescence, and always dreamed of going to New York. When the opportunity finally arises now they're college students (and long-distance friends), Zoe brings her new dorm-mate Fiona with her. Now one thing to know about Fiona: she's the fucking worst. She could suck the life out of a Barbie doll. Fiona totally derails the trip by being dismissive, obnoxious, and cynical, refusing to engage in "touristy" activities because she think she's above them.

And what makes this even more frustrating to read is the fact that everyone knows a Fiona in real life. I think this book really captured the essence of a deeply unhappy person who drags everybody down with them, so much so that her character made me viscerally very angry. If Fiona has 100 haters, I'm one. If she has 10 haters, I'm one. If she has zero haters, I'm dead.

I found the ending a little unsatisfying -- it really ends with a whimper rather than a bang. And I was expecting some big confrontation or a confession from Fiona that made us empathise with her a little more. It's a nuanced story with a subtle plotline rather than something grand and sweeping, but I think it needed a better payoff.

I'll definitely be checking out the other graphic novels by this duo though!

Also FUCK (and I cannot stress this enough) FIONA.

3.5 / 5

[s.penkevich [mental health hiatus] · Rating 3 out of 5]

The shift from adolescence into adulthood is often a jarring, bumpy ride where old friends and former feelings of selfhood can get bounced off down the road. The awkwardness of a reunion vacation with a high school best friend after beginning to grow apart down separate paths in college is brought to life in Roaming, a gorgeous and somber YA graphic novel from cousin-duo Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki. Capturing the spirit of a vacation gone wrong as friendships erode, Roaming quietly sneaks into your heart and pulls all the heartstrings in its bittersweet slice-of-life story.

As they so brilliantly did in This One Summer), Roaming handles a lot of heavy themes through quotidian and understated narratives and presents them through art that uses a limited color palette but really explores the possibilities of visual storytelling with shifts into surrealism or full page spreads that create a montage effect. We follow friends Zoe and Dani’s reunion for a trip to Manhattan, but Fiona—a “friend” of Dani’s who has tagged along—and her strong personality starts to come between the two as she sways the trip to center herself. All the uncomfortable feelings of being out of place—both in physical space such as lost amidst the big city but also in time feeling the close friendship of the past slipping away—are captured so well.

What works best here is the subtleties of the story. While Fiona is overtly a jerk and we can all feel for Dani being left out and distanced from her own best friend by Fiona and Zoe’s budding romance, its the small quips themselves that seem to speak the loudest. Fiona making Dani ashamed for what she enjoys, for instance, such as undercutting her enjoyment of the museum for being privileged Western propaganda, starts to reveal not only her narcissism but also the lengths she’ll go to appear cool, confident with unblemished tastes because inside she is just as lost and directionless as everyone else (her insistance on not looking at maps to not “look like tourists” is, in a way, a metaphor of how she lives her life). But I also enjoyed the slowburn arc of Zoe, who is also clearly sifting through a sense of self to understand her own queer identity and direction, being drawn to Fiona (and casting aside Dani in the process who now seems a bit embarrassing) but then realizing that sort of “cool” is not as desirable when she sees the consequences.

Ultimately, this story just felt real. It feels awkward, it feels embarrassing, it feels like trying to grow up and make mistakes and trying to connect your past to your present in hopes it will be an arrow to a future. Its a story that makes you feel the growing pains. The ending, or rather the abrupt finish to the story, is really impressively orchestrated. There is no resolution because, especially during the early college years, we have no resolution of self and only a continuous, amorphous process. Nothing here really comes to a quotable resolve, but we can feel the shift in each character. And that’s life. And I love that the Tamaki cousins can capture it so beautifully.

The art is gorgeous here too. I particularly like the experimentation it uses, capturing montage moments that reflect a slow and ponderous passage of time, or city views that really emphasize how small they feel in their own lives. But most impressive was a late scene where a conversation between Dani and Zoe over a shared joint transports the imagery back a few years to their high school selves during a house party while the dialogue remains in the present. We really get a better insight into who they were not so long ago and the sudden return to the present really puts in sharp contrast the selves they were with the selves they are trying to be.It’s a really moving moment and shows they can take visual media to exciting places that show more than they tell.

Roaming was a bit hit for me. I love how quiet and understated it was yet still able to really move me to the core. I think a lot of this one really hit home though, and while I felt a strong empathetic familiarity with Zoe there have been moments in life where I was the Dani in a situation. I’ve never been cool enough to be the Fiona but I’ve definitely been an asshole so maybe? Either way, this is a great slice-of-life that tackles a lot of themes around growing pains and I’ll probably be thinking about this one for awhile.

3.5/5

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Congrats for the Eisner 2024 Best Graphic Album—New: Roaming, by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (Drawn & Quarterly). Okay, see below, where I disagreed with the esteemed judges. But I am a big fan of the Tamakis!

Well! I thought this was just okay. Consider the source, a 70-year-old white guy (swipe! buh-bye, Dave!) but stop! I also think that This One Summer, their last collaboration, one of the best YA graphic novels ever. Period. And I've read much of what they have done, and reviewed it (though it is hard to keep up with all the supe stuff Mariko is doing). So I think this is okay.

At page 100, at page 200, though, I am like: This is a 446-page graphic novel about a spring break with three girls in Manhattan in 2009 and almost nothing but sightseeing has happened yet??!! It's a travel book about being tourists in The City!?? Okay, then a little buzz happens between two girls, at the expense of the other one, there's some tension, and this gets resolved, and that's it.

Roaming has some of the intensity of feeling in the images that happened in those first two books, thanks to Jillian's amazing artwork, but this one over all is lighter, less consequential than something that digs deep into what it means to be a girl and woman such as we find in This One Summer. So the story is.. . nice, but lets me down a bit? It's a kind of roaming Manhattan story, episodic, with groaner refs to a time when you didn't want to use your phone because you incurred "roaming" charges, ugh.

The art is the real hero here from Jillian, whom I find in the credits got help in selecting/developing images for her depiction of 2009 NYC from online followers, I think? And then there are these sort of thrilling magical realist moments, swirling lovely colorful expressions of the emotional life of the trip. Those are the best pages, for sure, and there’s a few of them.

I dunno, I think any fans of this duo will buy anything they do, and this is going to be a hit, but honestly I would probably cut 1/3 of the story (ugh, but then you'd lose that artwork. . .) just to get more efficiently to the heart of it. But the girls become real, the two original friends right the ship, yay, okay. This will be an event in comics in 2023, so y'all should read it especially if you are fans of glbtq all girl friendship books and Tamaki comics greats.

Thanks to Netgalley, and Drawn & Quarterly for the tasteful production, and the goddesses Mariko and Jillian, who will probably hate me now (as if I existed) for this tepid review, but hey. I gotta be me.

[Paul Secor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Roaming is a well drawn and well devised graphic novel. My problem with it is that I didn't find that it contained much substance. Reading it, I was reminded of people who take selfies and show them to the world with the attitude - I think my life is important and everyone else should too. Or people who write memoirs at age thirty because they believe that everyone should share all of the "important" events that have occurred in their lives.

Drawing and presentation - 5 stars.
Substance - 2 stars.

[elle · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book depicted how awful it is to become an adult so accurately and the artwork was beautiful, but i wish fiona got hit by a subway car in the end and i’m so serious

[Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zoe and Dani, high school best friends now in their first year of college at two distant and different schools, reunite for a spring break in New York City in 2009. They have five days to cram in as much sight seeing and bonding as they can. But Dani brought one of her classmates, Fiona, and this third person injects an intense new energy into the dynamic. Dani wants to visit all of the biggest tourist attractions. Zoe wants to have some adult experiences she's never had before. And Fiona? Initially she wanted to ditch the other two, but then she decides Zoe is more interesting that the people she was going to meet up with, especially after Fiona manages to buy some weed from the desk manager at their hostel and Zoe turns out to have a fake ID. This is a smart, beautifully drawn story about the painful period between being a teen and becoming an adult, the growing pains of an old friendship, the addictive pull of a new crush, the struggle to figure out who you are and want to be against the backdrop of a foreign city. Fans of previous Tamaki collaborations will love this one as well. I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advanced reader copy; preorder it now or look for it in stores in September 2023.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jillian Tamaki is on her cartooning A-game with this book. I found myself just looking at the flow of the pages and the liquidity of the movement she gets from her characters (a real cartoonist reading of the book, to be sure). I found the story to be highly immersive, and while it wasn’t a grand drama, it definitely succeeded in portraying a very specific time and place and feeling. I believe a book can be about smaller truths and still be very valuable, but maybe that’s just me.

[haley ⊹ · Rating 2 out of 5]

one star for the artwork and one for the underlying themes of maturity and identity and whatever I GUESS, but oh my god they are all so infuriatingly rude and irritating, especially fiona. there's a difference between coming of age and finding yourself and growing up, versus just being a jackass who doesn't want to admit when they're being rude and harmful to their friends. yikes all around!

[Juan Naranjo]

ROAMING es una historia sobre la amistad al inicio de la edad adulta. Habla de ese momento en el que tus amistades de adolescencia se van convirtiendo en extraños porque ahora tu mundo es otro y tú eres otra persona.

Dos amigas del instituto que ahora son universitarias deciden cumplir el sueño juvenil de pasar un fin de semana en Nueva York, pero una de ellas lleva a una compañera de facultad que supone un elemento extraño en la relación de ambas y hace que todo se tambalee. ROAMING habla de cómo nos aferramos a amistades a las que ya, más que el cariño o la complicidad, solo nos unen los recuerdos. Y también habla de la necesidad de abrazar un nuevo yo… y de lo difícil que es llevarse bien durante los viajes.

Las Tamaki vuelven a unir sus fuerzas en un cómic tranquilo, hermoso, que se cocina a fuego lento y que está desprovisto de golpes de efecto porque ellas dos, como grandes observadoras de la vida cotidiana, encuentran la emoción en lo más cotidiano. Las autoras construyen en ROAMING un hermoso estudio sobre la amistad en la primera edad adulta, así como una carta de amor y odio a la ciudad de Nueva York (con un dibujo inolvidable que es de lo mejorcito en la bibliografía de ambas).

[alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfect depiction of a kind of shitty college girls’ trip. Jillian Tamaki is an absolutely masterful draftsman whose art feels effortlessly dimensional and gorgeous. Every forearm and leg and jawline slopes so elegantly and beautifully. I was in awe basically every page.

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oof this book was so good and too real. Two old high school friends meet up on spring break of their first year of university in NYC, where they've always wanted to go. One of their classmates tags along ... and throws a huge wrench in the dynamic. Young sapphics making questionable decisions, evolving friendships, a strong sense of place, gorgeous drawings, impeccable dialogue! Great job with the charismatic but ultimately toxic character.

[Jordyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Art was cute and the characters were realistic.....maybe too realistic. Its about 3 emotionally immature 19 year olds going on a trip to New York together and they're all just bad communicators and dramatic instigators. Nothing exciting or interesting happened, there was no character growth at all, it felt like some teens telling you about their stupid drama that to them is the worst thing thats ever happened but truly does not matter and seems so insignificant to anyone older than 23. I guess good job to the author(s) for capturing that life stage so well, but I did not need to read about it

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some Canadian college students spend spring break touring Manhattan. It's a thick book but a thin story, as a third wheel on the trip helps makes things a little messy between two lifelong friends. The messiness is pleasant enough to take in in its low-stakes way, but won't leave a lasting impression I fear.

The best part of the book is figuring out the many different ways the well-chosen title applies to the story, literally and figuratively.


(Best of 2023 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one of more of these lists:
• Washington Post
• NPR's Books We Love 2023: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels

This book made both lists.)

[Jutta Swietlinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dani and Zoe, two young women from Canada, good friends and former classmates, meet up to visit New York City together. Dani's new fellow student Fiona accompanies them. But two's company, three's a crowd ...
This graphic novel, the third cooperation between the cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, is about friendship, emotional turmoil, insecurities and a journey to self-discovery, while taking its characters seriously at all times.
The story is sometimes funny (with carefully measured cynical insertions), sometimes romantic or melancholic, and always feels very real and authentic.
I enjoyed it a lot and particularly loved the diversity and feminist approach.
Can't wait to read the two first comic books written/drawn by the two award-winning artists and authors as well!

[Taylor (Virginia Woolf’s Actual Wife)]

Very relatable for anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of being 19

[fatma · Rating 2 out of 5]

genuinely so confused by this. fiona is an asshole and zoe is a shit friend. i was fuming the whole time and then the book just randomly ended. what was even the point of this

[Hannah Showalter · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredible artwork and such an accurate portrayal of messy friendships in your 20s, and the horror of being stuck on a trip all together.

[fer · Rating 3 out of 5]

a arte é bem lindinha mas simplesmente tem uma das personagens mais INTAGRAVEIS que eu ja li. e sabe o pior? é uma personagem bem possiveis, todo mundo conhece uma pessoa assim. uma pessoa que sabe de tudo, que se acha mt cool, que ai tudo ela sabe ou tem alguem proximo que sabe, tudo é brega pra ela, ela é cool e fuma e bebe e desfaz do que as outras pessoas gostam, tudo ela é do contra. simplesmente INSUPORTAVEL. 


acabou sendo uma leitura que me engatilhou levemente em alguns pontos pq fala de amigas que foram viajar e essa viagem sendo meio estragada pra uma das amigas que queria conhecer varias coisas e nao conseguiu por culpa das outras. eu ja vivi uma situaçao parecida. me deu ate uma claustrofobia emocional ler, pensando meu deus eu nunca mais vou me colocar nessa situaçao de viajar con amigas e gastar um dinheiro pra estar num lugar querendo conhecer varias coisas e ter que ceder porque fulana quer fazer outra coisa.


sao 3 amigas, uma é insuportavel, mas as outras duas nao sao maravilhosas tbm nao. uma delas é bem perto de ser insuportavel tambem.


ou seja, carisma 0 as personagens kskksksks mas acho que foi intencional


e senti que acaba meio que do nada tambem, mas nao consigo pensar em algum final diferente que fosse fazer sentido

[maya ☆ (is starting uni!) · Rating 3 out of 5]

this nice little sapphic comic published by drawn and quarterly (a 30 min public transportation ride away from my home) was a breeze to read! i sat down and in little less than three hours, i was done with this little cautionary tale about choosing your vacay buddies properly and the importance of not passively ignoring your friend while pursuing a mere fling.

"roaming" was a well-structured comic set in new york city, lasts for a long weekend that went by so quickly to us. incredible vibes paired with the a-game dialogue gave it an unstoppable flow. zoe, dani and fiona all felt terribly human and to be honest, had someone told me that this was someone else' actual memories of such a trip, i would 100% believe them. especially fiona - she's the regular selfish "if im not having fun, none of yall are" type of bitch. the tamaki pair absolutely nailed her persona. she's the true energy vampire of the real world, a real menace even though she came out to be the star of this comic for me. hate her guts but she's a great character.

i'd give it a 3.5 stars but for the sake of the goodreads, i'll round it down.

[Jessica Park Rhode · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Take the title at face value; this book roams. Jillian’s art is so good, the line work, the atmosphere, the color palette.
The plot is small, but nuanced. If you remember traveling with friends (and friends of friends) when young, poor and figuring out how to be in the world, this’ll hit.

[Cheyenne · Rating 4 out of 5]

format: ebook (comic), ~440 pages
rating: 4 stars

i think i learned you should only travel with people you already know well

lovely art style, i especially liked the scene transitions and big panels. story and characters were engaging too

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really captures what it's like to be a young woman navigating friendships and stepping into the world as a new adult. Absolutely lovely, expressive art that shows bodies in a way that feels true.

[Elizabeth Schmidt · Rating 1 out of 5]

It always fascinates me when authors decide to write a whole book and illustrate it and yet still manage to forget to include a plot 🤷🏻‍♀️

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

one Tamaki always delivers, the other, not so much. review to come.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because it’s highly regarded and on a lot of lists. It’s a bit too long and moves slowly. But the best and most memorable part (besides the scenes of NYCity and some kaleidoscopic trippy panels) is the awkward angst of an old friendship being strained by new individual growth and more significantly by the insertion of a third person with a know-it-all, WTF attitude that slowly grows into a sense of betrayal and jealous anger. It is so nicely done. It feels so real (and poignant for that) because we’ve all been there. And we’ve all know someone like this third person who can rip apart the best laid plans of mice or first year college women reuniting for a long dreamed of visit to New York City.

[ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best part about traveling is the first time you leave the hotel, and you step outside, and you take it in. To experience something new and pure and overwhelming and heartfelt - something to live for.

[Sarah Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really took me back to the sensation of being a new adult and traveling with friends for the first time! That independence is sooo dizzying -- you almost don't know what to do with yourself, so you just keep haphazardly throwing sporadic impulses at the wall. Got me thinking about how badly executed some of my early friend trips were, in high school or right after. Like in this, for example, they miss out on a lot of NY sites because they a) didn't make reservations or b) didn't realize that something was on the other side of town and only had an hour to see it. That's some real prefrontal cortex shit that gets developed, just you wait!! Your travel is gonna improve by leaps and bounds in your mid-twenties. But as Fiona keeps pointing out, the touristy stuff isn't really the point anyway. Instead, what matters most about traveling while young is making decisions, problem-solving, navigating interpersonal dilemmas...and all of that social development stuff is translated beautifully here. I loved watching these characters interact with the big wide world around them, and seeing them for who they are, in all their strengths and faults alike!

[Dessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will read ANYTHING the Tamakis produce until the day I die and that is for GOOD REASON. They really know how to leverage the form of a graphic novel to combine the best of prose and film and present their stories like a tender little core sample of a frozen ocean. We’ll never understand the whole ocean, how could we — but man, the depth of this tiny little piece of it alone is kind of mind boggling, isn’t it? The texture and friction of these friendship dynamics and highs and lows are juuuuust right.

[Madison · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was beautiful, but I couldn't get over the fact that it's essentially about three rote, flat characters doing nothing. I'm all for intensely character-driven stories without much going on, but the people in them have to be significantly more compelling. You don't get to know much of anything about any of them, and nothing really changes.

[Fanny · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️