Spanish illustrator Jordi Lafebre is perhaps best known for his collaborations with the great French writer Zidrou, with works like Les Beaux Étés (‘Glorious Summers’), Lydie, and La Mondaine (‘Vice Squad’). In Always Never he strikes out on his own, handling both the writing and the art, and proves he’s up to the task. This is a great love story across the ages told in reverse, allowing Lafebre many an artistic touch.
The chapters count down from 20 to 1, each heralded by a quick sketch of a component of the story. We meet the two lovers when they themselves are finally able to meet again, now in their 60s: Ana, the Audrey Hepburn-esque mayor of an Italian city, and Zeno, a scholar. His years at sea have culminated in a doctorate espousing a quite far-fetched yet poetic notion of time - that it can move backwards - which is one that ties into the story perfectly. Ana and Zeno are as opposite as A and Z, at polar ends of the alphabet, and it is no wonder they’ve written each other so many letters in the in between years. The simple evidence of their names emphasizes how far apart they are - in both physical space and personality.
A plot element throughout the story is the construction of a bridge which will connect the two separate sides of this “city of seagulls”, and all the impediments the city planning committee, under Ana’s direction, encounters. Ana is seen explicitly stating how the bridge is a symbol of her and Zeno’s relationship. The correlations of these obstacles to real life are her already having a caring and understanding husband and daughter, and Zeno being intent on traveling the world and never settling down. As the story is told in reverse, what we see is a deconstruction of both the bridge and their relationship. Whichever way the clock runs, it takes a long time to plan and to build, with many a misstep. There are other allegories too, peppered throughout the text, of their being connected but not together - a tale of the Sun and the Moon and one of lost penguins - and other little elements, such as the fate of office furniture, to pick up along the way.
The city, Ana and Zeno’s hometown, is one not unlike Venice with its gondolas and waterways, and water and all its connotations is a consistent presence throughout Always Never. Zeno is a seafarer, and Ana’s successor as mayor cannot help himself when it comes to spouting maritime metaphors. There is a lovely passage where the two lovers listen to Bach together in the rain over the phone while she stays late at the office and he is captaining a distant ship.
There is a great amount of feeling in Always Never. On his website, Lafebre writes “The emotion in the pictures is the most important thing” and this shows through in his artwork. The cover alone gives a great indication of all that goes into the book with Ana and Zeno arm in arm under an umbrella walking through a wet city square with their eyes dreamily cast to the sky while the lower half of the scene is expertly reflected in a giant puddle. There are plenty of times along the way one stops to marvel at the composition of the illustrations - a doctor’s face within the sheets, Ana crossing the bridge, and Ana and Zeno synchronizing playing their records. The same goes for watching how extended scenes unfold, like Ana walking through the snow on election day, her meeting with Zeno in the greenhouse, their phone call when he spends the night on a beach, and Ana’s photoshoot with her aging assistant, Edna.
The last chapter itself runs completely backwards. And of course the ending of the first chapter, chapter 20, would have been the traditional ending, leaving off with "where they are now", with us wondering what Fate will hold for these two lovers, as so much has gone in to bringing them together.
