Štěpánka Jislová’s autobiographical graphic novel looks at the toxicity of some modern relationships and sexual violence. It does so with courage, determination and a real flair for the language of comics.

Comics

Growing up on a housing estate in the post-Velvet Revolution years of the 1990s – sexual violence, anxiety around love, toxicity in relationships, and casual sex as both a placebo and a refuge. The intimate personal themes which Štěpánka Jislová broaches and then examines in detail in her autobiographical graphic novel Heartcore have been largely absent from Czech comics up till now. Ambitious, original and inventive in its use of a variety of techniques, this book by one of the most distinctive Czech comics writers of the past decade still comes across as very authentic and lived and will have no trouble standing up to the global competition.

This unapologetically frank story about the painful search for oneself in solitude and in relationships and about first-hand experience of sexual abuse is presented with humour and objectivity. At the same time, it combines artistically elegant stylization with unvarnished honesty in its depiction in order to communicate something that is otherwise virtually impossible to convey. Part generational testimony, part analytical (self)disclosure, with an element of indictment and at least a hint of manifesto, it all adds up to an exceptional graphic novel about what it was like to be a young woman not so long ago and what it is like today, and about the complex and sometimes almost unbearably confusing and traumatic world of modern partnerships and intimate relationships.