March 23, 2026
Nowhere, by Jon Claytor
The monsters are real in Nowhere, the debut graphic novel by Jon Claytor, a book I’ve been looking forward to because I’ve enjoyed Claytor’s comics on Instagram and because it’s edited by Bethany Gibson, who’s one of my favourite Canadian editors. But then it turns out the cube in Nowhere is real as well, as in actually real, nonfictional, a giant white box outside Sackville, NB, that is (according to my web searches)…a facility for storing cranberries? Although that’s a part of the story I choose not to think about too deeply, instead considering all the other ways that Nowhere most intriguingly blurs the line between impossible and otherwise, its uncanniness and familiarity. It’s the story of 12 year old Joel whose deadbeat stepdad’s car runs out of steam in small town that seems nondescript save for the aforementioned cube (I don’t believe in cranberries) and oh yes, the gangs of marauding wolves and clowns and zombies who walk the streets at night, and ordinary citizens who keep disappearing.
Nowhere is a monstrous tale of growing up in an unstable world where anything is possible in the worst way and everything else is precarious and uncertain. It’s a story of becoming and unbecoming, of loneliness and desperation, probing the eerie edges of reality, adolescence, and inexplicability. Weird and twisted, it’s quietly absorbing in the very best way.
