Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship by Janice Shapiro
(Fantagraphics)
April 1, 2025
A CAREER that started with screenplays and short story writing pivoted to personal comic-strip confessions with Shapiro’s series called Crushable: My Life in Crushes from Ricky Nelson to Viggo Mortensen. (Other subjects of affectionate celebrity worship: Neil Young and Mary Tyler Moore.) Her debut graphic novel focuses on real-life socialite Honoria Murphy Donnelly, who died in 1998 at age 81. In this treatment, the daughter of the couple from modernist Europe is paired for a summer with the daughter of American family friends, and the two try and figure out their place amidst the swirling social scenes along the French Riviera of 1929. Marc Weisblott
