The Winter 2021 Manga Guide

A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad's an Alcoholic

What's It About? 

Mariko Kikuchi tells the painful story of her father's alcoholism, and her own journey through guilt and self-blame to understand her father's illness. She rejects the common belief that family members can and should be forgiven for anything they do, no matter how much harm they cause. This powerful, self-contained autobiographical manga began as a web series that went viral, and went on to inspire a 2019 film in Japan. Now this groundbreaking work about the ripple effects of addiction will be released in English for the very first time.

A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad's an Alcoholic is drawn and scripted by Mariko Kikuchi and Seven Seas has released its first volume both digitally and physically for $9.99 and $14.99 respectively

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Bleak, Grim. There are plenty of adjectives that could be used to describe A Life Turned Upside Down, and on the surface, most of them don't sound complimentary. But some stories need to be bleak to make their points, and this is definitely one of them. The story follows the author's real-life experience with her alcoholic father, and if it at times feels emotionally detached – which I could see as being the main objection to the way the work is told – that's because Kikuchi herself will be the first to admit that she's got issues with opening up. She more than comes by that honestly: her father was, as the title indicates, an alcoholic, and her mother committed suicide when she was in eighth grade. And as the oldest child, it feels like everything ends up on her shoulders.

There are plenty of elements here that are relatable, even if alcoholism and suicide aren't issues in your life or family. For me, the fact that young Mari suddenly finds herself more or less the head of the family simply because she was born first hits very hard; in September my mother suffered a fall and a brain injury and as the oldest child, the pressure to be the one to step up and do all the things she once did has been unfathomable – even though, like in Mari's case, the younger sister might be better equipped to handle things. (My mother is recovering really well, though!) Mari grapples with her emotions throughout the story, and again, these are things that feel very recognizable and real: her anger, her disappointment, and most of all, her feelings that she ought to have been able to do something to stop her parents' lives from spiraling out of control. She could no more prevent her father's alcoholism than I could prevent my father's Parkinson's Disease, but knowing that intellectually and knowing it emotionally are two very separate things, something she works towards acknowledging over the course of the book.

Kikuchi doesn't really delve into the roots of her father's disease, although there are plenty of little throwaway lines to suggest that she blames Japan's drinking culture and his friends. In some ways, that's not important to the story, because she's writing about how his drinking changed her life. We see glimpses of how it affects her sister and her father (and definitely her mother), but that's not really what the book is about. It's harsh and upsetting, both in the ways that her family is slowly destroyed and in the methods she's forced to use to cope with everything. But it also may be the kind of book that reminds you that we're not alone, no matter what terrible thing we're going through. We're all getting through as best we can – and the process of dealing with things is one that never really ends.