Aeiou, or Any Easy Intimacy marks the ‘end’ of Jeffrey Brown’s autobiographical Girlfriend Trilogy, following Clumsy and Unlikely. There will be a short epilogue which I’ll certainly be getting to in due course. This last book contains the story of Brown’s relationship with a girl named Sophia, in a way that Brown himself claims in post-script “leaves so much left unsaid that it may as well be fiction.”
Ever the auteur, Brown presents Aeiou in an even simpler fashion than his previous books. With two large panels per page, and 2 pages per ‘chapter’ it breaks the format of his other autobiographical work in several ways. Most importantly, the moments are more carefully defined and rendered, as with the pencil work. As a result, much of the story happens through implication only – rather than being a warts-and-all document of a relationship, it leaves the reader to infer much of the character interplay based on a suggestion, with the starts and ends of conversations occasionally missing, and the fallout and buildup of any emotional moment left to our imaginations. These techniques give a hyper-real feeling to the characters and events, giving a stark picture of things that would seem far more mundane as part of a larger tapestry.
It seems that, out of all of Brown’s documented relationships, Aeiou appears to tell the story of the one that hit him the hardest. Occasionally criticised for being weaker in structure than the others, the fact that it misses out so much, allowing huge narrative jumps, suggests that he felt less willing to go into a lot of specifics – clearly, the acknowledgement at the end indicates a fair amount of missing material, as does the fact that the narrative has a happy ending that the relationship clearly didn’t. It’s not as if it was the freshest in his mind – Clumsy, at least, was started before the relationship ended. The shift from his earlier autobiographies leads many people to claim that this isn’t the best book to start with, but I disagree – it’s more challenging, certainly, and perhaps a non-comics reader might have trouble reading a comic that gets so disjointed, but the more I consider it, the more I think it’s probably the best of the three books. It takes the techniques and idiosyncracies of them and trims away the fat, leaving an arguably purer experience, and one that certainly requires more of the reader, and in return, gives more back.
One thing I’ve never mentioned about Brown’s artwork, but that seems most appropriate for this story, is how disarming his depictions can be. The simplicity of the drawing lets you connect with characters on a far more direct level than deeply accurate renderings would allow. Part of the appeal of cartooning (against more ‘mainstream’ comic work) is that it allows for the application of a more general mental model, and Brown’s work in Aeiou takes advantage of that to about the fullest extent possible, finally inverting things with the last panel – a detailed illustration of Sophia standing in a darkened room. That moment alone hits you all the harded because of the sudden realism that previously was absent.
Understandably, Aeiou isn’t going to be everyone’s favourite. It does largely depend on how you take ambiguity in a story. For those that have read Clumsy and Unlikely and are looking for more of the same, this is the closest you can get from Brown, but it’s not quite identical to what has come before. It’s not really the last word, but it’s the end of the full-length works on the subject. Just don’t go into it looking for closure.
Buy Aeiou: Any Easy Intimacy from Amazon (UK)
Buy Aeiou: Any Easy Intimacy from Amazon (US)
