Iris is a renowned painter who, despite her advanced age, remains passionately devoted to her art – abstract painting featuring straight lines. Stricken by a degenerative eye disease, Iris must resign herself to losing her complete and precious independence and move into a home for the elderly. She has to cope with a new everyday life, which reminds her of her own vulnerability but also allows her to confront some old demons from her past. She turns her incurable illness into a force for reinventing herself — and it’s a touch of lyricism fuelled by an ultimate lust for life that turns her art and her relationship with the world upside down. Behind her persona of the detached artist, as cantankerous as she is endearing, we discover a resilient woman who uses her straight lines to stand her ground.

Through the eyes of Iris, Fabian Menor uses his art to help us discover the new world of the ageing artist, a world that’s curved, distorted and debilitating. His experience in a home for the elderly, where he spent several months in preparation for this book, really shines through in the finished work. In his graphic novel, the author reminds us that there is no perfect age at which to start again – that art is primarily a form of introspection that has its place at all stages of an individual’s life.