Book Review: Imagine Wanting Only This

Kristen Radtke’s graphic memoir Imagine Wanting only this raises many questions and has many themes, but the book doesn’t necessarily answer them. We follow Radtke as she deals with the death of a favorite uncle, becomes engaged to a man we know she is not suited for, goes to grad school, and travels the globe extensively often visiting ruins and other abandoned buildings.

This is a lot of material to cover, even if the book was a narrative, but especially so for a graphic novel with sparse drawings and verbiage. The first part of the book deals with the admiration and then unexpected death of her uncle from a heart condition that many in her family have. I wanted the book to be about this, and though she returned to this topic at times, she seemed to loop further and further away from it.

Throughout the book we see that Radtke is restless, needing to go to the next place and the next, moving from city to city, and traveling from country to country, but feeling empty and lonely in each. She becomes obsessed with abandoned places and from this, locks into the idea of impermanence. She talks about how we will all be ruins one day, and that there will come a time when nothing we have touched will exist anymore.

The book’s title, “Imagine Wanting Only This,” is the opposite of her discontent. She is surprised when she visits her…