A friend of mine told me that he met Vera Brosgol at a convention a few years ago. Since he’s a poor and luckless boy, he approached her without the means of purchasing her Eisner and Harvey award-winning comic book, "Anya’s Ghost." My friend had a bookmark with him, and he asked her to autograph it. Brosgol signed the bookmark with some mixture of confusion and snark. The memory brings shame to him every time I tell him to recount the sad tale. I went into "Anya’s Ghost" with my friend’s memory in mind.
"Anya’s Ghost" tells the story of Anya Borzakovskaya. She’s a high school truant that would rather smoke cigarettes and cut Economics than anything else. Playing hooky with her friend Siobhán allows Anya a moment of repose from her stressful life. She comes from a family of Russian immigrants, and she’s embarrassed by her roots. Her single mother is the typical stubborn Russian matriarch, and her younger brother is a bit of a brat. There’s no father in her life, which is not explained. Since Anya doesn’t attend class at her expensive private school, her grades are crummy. She doesn’t have any friends except Siobhán and she’s insecure about her body. On top of all that, she has a crush on one of the most popular guys in school—who’s already in a relationship with the prettiest girl in school.
After an argument with Siobhán one day, Anya storms off into a park away from campus. Distracted by her problems, she stumbles down a dry well where she meets Emily. Emily is a ghost; she died in 1918, and her skeleton’s lain at the bottom of the well undiscovered since then. Anya spends three days in the well with Emily until she’s rescued, but she finds out Emily’s followed her home. It turns out Emily’s spirit is attached to her bones, and a piece of her fell into Anya’s backpack while she was in the well. The two form a symbiotic relationship where Anya shows Emily what life is like since she died, and Emily helps Anya by giving her answers to school tests and spying on the boy she has a crush on. Anya discovers having a ghost as a new best friend is great; that is, until she finds out the truth about how Emily died.
At the heart of the story is Anya herself. She’s one of the most fully realized characters I’ve come across in a one-shot comic in a long time. There’s very little time to get to know her before the story begins, but her thorny attitude and her insecurities quickly humanize her. Perhaps it’s the snarky personality I pictured Vera Brosgol having based off of my friend’s anecdote that drew me so quickly to Anya or maybe it’s sympathy for her Russian roots since my girlfriend’s family hails from the Soviet Union. Five minutes of research after finishing the book led me to the conclusion that Anya might be an author surrogate because Brosgol is a Russian immigrant herself.
In composition, "Anya’s Ghost" is strictly structured. The pages are paneled one after another and flow well. There’s no bleeding into the gutters except for a few dialogue bubbles that break through panel frames. Some people find this structure boring because they prefer splash panels that speed up the action of the story, but I think Brosgol succeeds with her conservative pages instead of trying anything too exciting. The action is paced well within the panels without them exploding and risk confusing the reader.
"Anya’s Ghost" is a quick read and it’s a pretty good read. While the relationship between Anya and Emily is interesting, I wasn’t impressed with the twist at the end of the second act; however, that didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. I was actually more interested in Anya’s life as a Russian immigrant trying to be cool and rebellious in an American private school, but I could read Persepolis again if I wanted a similar story. The characters that surround Anya and Emily are fleshed out, but they’re pushed to the wayside by the ghost story. "Anya’s Ghost" would have benefited if it had been a longer book, but the main plot is too thin to spread over more than one volume. Overall, Brosgol deserves the praise and rewards she’s gained from her first comic. I eagerly await more work from her.
