Walden, Tillie – A City Inside

January 23, 2025

Website

A City Inside

I’m linking straight from the publisher because they’re in the UK and they have a lot of books you’ve probably never heard of. Explore, try something new! Anyway, this is my third Tillie Walden review, and in the first two I believe I used the word “masterpiece” unironically. So I guess you could say that I had high hopes for this one. And they were… met? I think? Here, I can’t resist quoting Tillie from her website trying to summarize this book: “This book. Oy. Probably my strangest work, and secretly one of my favorites. Don’t ask me what it means because I definitely don’t know.” And now you want ME to talk about it? Madness, but I guess that’s why they pay me the big bucks. Side note: nobody pays me any bucks, but I’m always willing to take them. This book is significantly shorter than her other two books that I’ve reviewed, but it feels like one of those books that is actually significantly more revealing of the author than they may have intended. Not that I have any inside scoop on that theory, which is why it’s just a theory. This one starts off with a woman on a couch, about to start a therapy session of some kind. We see what she sees, which is an exploration of her life, what she wants out of it (privacy and peace, mostly) and what causes her to leave her comfort zone, which is a relationship and a cat, not necessarily in that order. She tries city life, leaving the quiet city she’s built in her head, but in the end she just can’t take it. The rest of the book, which I’m not going to talk about because I’ve probably already said too much, deals with her unpacking her decision and taking in all of the pros and cons. Among many other things, but that’s why you can read it for yourself. It’s at least partially fiction, because her time in space is mentioned, and there’s a lovely ending that I didn’t see coming. I hope she’s done with her Walking Dead spinoff comic soon, as I’m really curious to see what other original stories she can come up. As for you, if her gigantic graphic novels seemed too intimidating, here’s a shortie just for you! $17