Sophie Yanow...is humbly conscious of the limits of her experience, [and] she makes you smile and cringe and sympathize anyway. Yanow perfectly captures that early-20s state of mind where you want to have principles but don't know exactly what yours are, so you're all too inclined to embrace those of anyone who seems intriguing (or just cute) ... The journey that follows isn't suspenseful or surprising—it's not even particularly angsty as college stories go. And yet, Yanow's got this particular combination of astuteness and humility that makes the very lack of drama engaging. It feels nice to sit with someone who looks at the world the way she does. After a while, you start noticing all sorts of nuances within each low-key anecdote, and you'll wonder how much you're overlooking as you charge through life at your usual pace ... Her ligne claire ('clear line') drawings are so geometrical and spare, they could almost be ideograms ... This combination of economy and universality is at once unassuming, wry and subversive ... The apparent simplicity of her compositions is deceptive, and her message is paradoxical. Even as she strips away extraneous detail, she's teasing you about your own tendency to oversimplify everything. The Contradictions isn't just an engaging read, it's a warming and affirming one.

This funny and very knowing graphic novel will still strike an exceedingly loud chord with anyone who is, or has ever been, a fresher, far from home and all at sea ... Drawn in black and white, Yanow’s figures are a couple of rectangles topped by the circles of their anoraks, rucksacks and spectacles, while the boulevards and canals around them appear hardly at all. But though such a pared-back style can hardly be said to be beautiful, it’s perfect here. As they trudge from city to city, their days bereft of beauty, variety and everyday joy, Sophie and Zena could be almost anywhere. In the end, for all its comedy, The Contradictions is a book about how principles, if too firmly held, can make a person blind—not just to new ideas, but to all the good things in the world.

In its own delightful contradiction, the art in The Contradictions is beautifully simplistic. The entire work is in black and white, completely monochrome with no more than some crosshatching for a few shades. Yet, bold backgrounds and certain panels with novel angles make the style everything but dull. In addition to its strong literary value and artistic flair, The Contradictions makes an excellent read for anyone who would like to study abroad or has already done so ... Nothing awakens a new perspective like travel, and The Contradictions will spark that fire to go.

Sophie Yanow draws great legs. There are artists who are masters of the face, who are able to show everything a character thinks and feels with a glare. Then there are cartoonists who can tell a story through body language, drawing characters with their arms flailing wildly or their shoulders raised in indifference. Rarely have I seen someone like Sophie Yanow, though, who can tell you everything you ever wanted to know about a person through the movement of their legs alone ... Yanow’s artistic style, in which simple figures are defined by long spindly appendages, is in full force throughout The Contradictions . This is, after all, a story about movement and distance — not just the distance the characters cover on foot, but emotional distance as well. These are young people constantly testing the boundaries of their relations, never quite sure where they stand with one another, how deep their connection is. The way Yanow draws her characters is likewise useful in showing the relative inexperience of these characters. These figures appear as if they might bend and twist with every motion, which is probably the best encapsulation of the young student’s experience as their every step is fraught with terror because the world is an unfamiliar minefield ... Like many a Bildungsroman, the physical movement of the story is mostly there as an anchor for the psychological development the characters go through. While I have mentioned Yanow’s skills with body language, she also has great ability in other areas of cartooning ... Her figure-line, in particular, is more pleasing in its softness, and more easily finds the humanity of the characters in the minutia of everyday life. She does this while still maintaining her strong grasp of physical spaces and urban development. Her backgrounds are often sparse, but that does not detract from the strength of the artwork in depicting location; Yanow simply knows when to let the figures stand on their own and when to showcase larger sections of the cities they visit. I wouldn’t call her choices in The Contradictions 'evolution,' because that implies that the art here is inherently better than Yanow’s older work. What we have here is mostly a slight shift in the artistic direction. It shows Yanow can still find new means of expression within her established style.

The main character’s social awkwardness is perfectly reflected in Yanow’s style. Her character designs are super-simplified, and built of the most basic shapes ... The Contradictions isn’t about seeing the sights or how travel broadens the mind, but about our ability to miss out on the world by focusing too much on ourselves. You, a grown-up, have probably already learned that. But it’s still a lot of fun to watch the young Sophie just start to realize it.

In this engaging work of autofiction, Yanow has scrubbed clean the messiness of memory—the things that one romanticizes, mutates, or hides are laid bare here ... This is a familiar quest in American culture—coming of age through travel being a path into adulthood, if one has a choice to do so in their early twenties. Sophie does have this option, and goes to Paris; it is in the depiction of her decisions abroad that make The Contradictions so compelling a read ... It’s refreshing to read a coming-of-age story that centers so completely on female friendships—especially the friendships that don’t work out ... you’ll want to lay on the couch all day and read The Contradictions in one sitting.

... a revelatory exploration of hitchhiking across Europe, living other people’s journeys, and finding out that anarchism isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Politics, poverty, loneliness, parenting, the law—all are fraught with contradictions ... To use a term like autofiction wouldn’t be quite right, but it gets at what Yanow does so earnestly and sincerely—telling a story about learning who you really are and what boundaries are needed to preserve that self, and of course there is the always fun lesson of how to use wikis to find the right French gas stations to hitchhike a ride away from Paris ... Yanow’s art is breathtakingly understated and masterfully weighted. Yanow, when asked about the difference between comics in France and America, said that in France, all comic artists are trained as fine artists, and Yanow’s emotive, thin lines do more work developing character and theme than most fiction does with entire plotlines. Sophie Yanow is a revelation.

A strong theme of alternative culture runs through The Contradictions , commenting on capitalism, corporatism, anarchy, and organization. Sophie experiments with shoplifting as a form of protest against supermarkets that throw out food at the end of the day anyway. Anarchists prove to be exceedingly organized, to the point of some groups creating their own structure and bickering with others. Throughout the graphic novel, philosophies, just like people, are shown never to be as straightforward as they are made out to be in the manifesto ... In its own delightful contradiction, the art in The Contradictions is beautifully simplistic. The entire work is in black and white, completely monochrome with no more than some crosshatching for a few shades. Yet, bold backgrounds and certain panels with novel angles make the style everything but dull ... In addition to its strong literary value and artistic flair, The Contradictions makes an excellent read for anyone who would like to study abroad or has already done so.

Drawn in a black-and-white ligne claire style and primarily laid out on a six-panel grid, The Contradictions ’ understated visuals sell the austerity of Sophie’s study abroad experience, which loses its wonder when Sophie understands the personal cost. Some of the most powerful sequences feature Yanow on the phone with her mother, conversations that showcase the cartoonist’s subtle and rich character acting. There’s some very impressive body language throughout The Contradictions , and by abstracting the forms just a bit, Yanow creates geometric shapes that evoke different moods and relationship dynamics.

Yanow’s illustrations capture her [protagonist's] caution intensely with a few pen strokes, and her cityscapes are equally utilitarian while communicating a sense of place perfectly. Visually, there’s a hint of Tin-Tin-esque continental caper, but Yanow’s narrative also acts as a curious counter to Ulli Lust’s gonzo graphic memoir, How I Tried To Be a Good Person, about rejecting convention while criss-crossing Europe in the 1980s. The narrative emphasizes the squirmy discomfort of attempting to adhere to youthful ideals, finding them flawed, and holding oneself back from a world asking to be embraced in all its messiness ... Yanow’s voice is pointed, her cartooning delightfully specific without being precious or showy. This debut subtly, effectively challenges readers to dig into their own internal dissonance.

The Contradictions is an attractive comic on the surface. A distinctive style reminiscent of DIY comic zines pairs perfectly with the striking liner inks of each panel. It feels fresh with a touch of funky nostalgia. But the story immediately asserts itself as more than a quick, refreshing read with the author and main character, Sophie, reminding herself to ‘not be such a tourist’ in Paris, even though she is just that ... It’s a comic about growing up just a little bit. Learning that places, as well as people, have real, inner cores beyond their shiny, attractive surfaces. Not all of them are for you, and you are not for all of them. Not so much a cautionary tale as much as a truth about your twenties, it leaves you with a sense of both distraction and fulfillment, and says that holding on too strongly to convictions that you think make you look ‘cool,’ can really get in the way of enjoying your life.

Yanow’s autofiction story captures a distinctly realistic, relatably self-conscious moment in her protagonist’s coming-of-age. Sophie’s calls to her mom from her spartan Paris bedroom, of which we only hear Sophie’s side, are particularly genius. Yanow’s crisp and unshaded black-and-white drawings contain a great depth of field, perfect for showing Sophie against richly architectural, often-enveloping European backdrops ... A clever, endearing tale of the thrill of falling in with someone new, and the relief of returning to oneself.

Yanow...captures with wit and insight the conflicts inherent in being young and remaining idealistic in her Eisner Award–winning autofiction ... Yanow’s invigorating clear-line cartooning, which recalls Otto Soglow, matches perfectly with her deadpan, observational storytelling. Her angular, long-limbed characters bound about from minimalist white-space panels to carefully detailed European cityscapes. Appealing both to indie comics fans on the cusp of coming-of-age to those looking back decades to their own youthful follies, this assured, smart chronicle is a winner.