Tiphaine Rivière

Francesca Barrie

A hilarious, consistently clever account of the author’s struggle to complete her PHD.

[A] delightfully expressive graphic novel... laced with dark, self-deprecating humour... Rivière’s languid linework transforms Jeanne’s daily grind into spot-on visual metaphors... What could be a rambling plunge into misery instead unfolds as a truthful, witty tale, relatable whether readers are Ph.D., ABD, or neither.

In a genre still dominated by boys/men with super-exciting lives, this tale of an intense, anxious young woman pulling her hair out over the credibility of her labyrinth-motif angle on Kafka makes for an unusual, but very funny and satisfying read. If you're looking for the female Woody Allen of graphic novels...this could be the answer.

Quite possibly the funniest book about academic life since David Lodge’s Changing Places. How brilliantly she captures its veiled bitchiness; how expertly – yet lovingly too – she sends up the silly cul-de-sacs of scholarship… This is a book for anyone who has ever laboured under a deadline… Put off what you intended to do today and go out and buy it, right now.

A hilariously accurate satire of academia, and a wrenching portrait of obsession.

Stephen Collins, author of 'The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil'

A tale of procrastination, played for laughs both visually and narratively. Paris - both exterior and interior - is drawn beautifully... The book demonstrates an amusing honesty about the world of education from both sides.

A sharp new graphic novel exploring the perils of postgraduate life… [A] darkly comic book.

Funny, troubling and close to the bone for anyone with a life in academia... Rivière is a master of humour and heart-breaking honesty.

Caveat: do not read this wry and ever so well observed graphic novel if you have just this second committed yourself to a three-year PhD. The rest of us lucky pups who left academia behind decades ago - or never moored there in the first place - will have a whale of a time, but you will probably cry.

In a similar vein to Posy Simmond's Tamara Drewe, Rivière uses a classic text to illustrate the modern world. The gates of Kafka's imagination become her own.

Rivière’s gags are all visual, using her artwork to give impressions of what characters are thinking and feeling, in a way that is both recognisable and inventive... a witty and intelligent book.

I credit this book with helping me to drag myself out of a recent PhD-related slump and I think that it deserves to be widely read... it is the most enjoyable – and the most painfully accurate – book on academia that I have read.

Postgraduate Contemporary Women's Writing Network

If you like comics, if you have a PhD, then we would say this book is very definitely for you.

‘This is a book for anyone who has ever laboured under a deadline, battled a stubborn pig of a boss, or half drowned beneath a wave of bureaucracy and paperwork. Put off what you intended to do today and go out and buy it, right now.’ 
Rachel Cooke, Observer 
 
An Observer Book of the Year 
Shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize 2017 
 
When Jeanne is accepted on to a PhD course, she is over the moon, brimming with excitement and grand plans – but is the world ready for her masterful analysis of labyrinth motifs in Kafka’s The Trial? 
 
At first Jeanne throws herself into research with great enthusiasm, but as time goes by, it becomes clear that things aren’t quite going according to plan. 
 
Notes on a Thesis is a reminder of the strangeness of academia, of every awful essay, every disastrous exam, and every insanity-inducing dissertation. If you’ve ever stared gloomily at a blank page, battled with office administrators or driven yourself (and everyone you know) mad by droning on about your work, then Notes on a Thesis will make you laugh (or cry) in recognition.

Tiphaine Rivière

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