"Hell is others" wrote Sartre, but for Charles and Jules it is the opinion of others that poses a problem and prevents them from living.
Two loners…
The opinion of others begins with an unlikely meeting. Charlie is a great source of concern for his mother. The young teenager fights with the neighborhood children and insults his mother. She is overwhelmed because her other child has to be operated on far from Paris. When Charlie is expelled from college for a week, his mother finds himself without a childcare solution. She is forced to drop him off by surprise at the home of her half-brother, Jules, whom she has not seen for years. This computer engineer is however very poorly equipped to manage Charlie. Jules is a complete loner. He lives alone and eats on a bench in front of his office. When he goes out, he is unable to socialize with other adults. The two main characters are also taciturn because Charlie is an asocial teenager. He seems to have no friends and his only passion is video games. Initially, we follow each one in parallel and the reader misunderstands the relationships between them because it is necessary to wait until quite late to understand that Jules is Charlie's uncle. The first days of forced cohabitation are very complicated. Jules flees the kid and the tensions he triggers by taking refuge in the fetal position in his room. As always, the adult runs away from problems. Their reports are brief and quickly violent. To install this heavy atmosphere, the author Léna Saurel limits the dialogues to the strict minimum. Jules is almost mute as large bubbles and capital letters illustrate the tension between Charlie and his mother. The opinion of others could then be a tragedy on the impossible communication between beings but everything changes by an accident
… who discover themselves
The book becomes a zany comedy during a scooter chase and as the days go by, the two loners discover each other. Jules and Charles no longer respect any law and it is these transgressions that bring them together. Contrary to many stories about loneliness, the moral is not that it is essential to fit into society but to open up to people who deserve it. We have the right to run away from toxic people. The opinion of others shows two blocks of loneliness colliding. This violent shock reveals cracks letting in a touching humanity. The opinion of others also shows that a child's school violence is not innate but has social causes. Charlie is not a bad boy but he is very worried about his sister in the hospital. Unwittingly, his single mother abandons him and he feels it very painfully. In addition, he was bullied in college because his hair was too long. Young author, Léna Saurel is in The opinion of other scriptwriters, cartoonist and colorist. She is also a cartoonist. She has a personal style and is out of the norm. Saurel goes to the essentials but without ever being messy. It uses very little color but a dominant tone of light blue. This choice of craftsmanship can be seen right down to the hand-drawn page numbers. Published in the off-screen collection of La Boîte à bulles, L'avis des autres is a tender life story that could be just as suitable for an adult as for a child. This beautiful meeting warms the heart in this winter period. You can discover chronicles of the Bubble Box on Taxi trips and flying saucers.
