Leavitts drawings depict her emotional upheaval with poetic grace in imagery ranging from abstract blackandwhite to warm colors and recognizable figures during moments of serenity and acceptance This unflinching chronicle offers readers who have experienced loss a sense of catharsis and solace Publishers Weekly

Leavitts graphic memoir Something Not Nothing took on a life of its own as abstract images and mixed media such as watercolours coloured pencil and ink blended with poetic text The book guides readers through the couples decision to end Donimos life and Leavitts own heartbreak and emotions that accompanied the choice The end result is beautiful and moving BC Living

Leavitt labels Something Not Nothing a collection of comics but that phrase barely begins to describe Leavitts formally innovative artwork freehand panels and fullpage images that combine poetic text with illustrations and abstract images and textures realized in watercolor ink and colored pencil She chronicles the couples progress toward the decision to end Donimos life as well as her own deep resistance and terror taking us literally to a place beyond words A uniquely gorgeous chronicle Full box of tissues recommended Kirkus Reviews

Sarah Leavitt has created a beautiful monument in this book a primal portrait of grief and a powerful testament to a hard and lasting love I believe that we as artists are trying to share our emotional realities with our readers and invite them into the feeling even when theyve not had this particular experience Leavitt succeeds in this over and over again through the intimacy she lets the reader in on and the powerful juxtaposition of her art and words This book is a beautiful deep and powerful use of the comics form Nicole J Georges author of Calling Dr Laura

The fact that I wrote this blurb through tears should be enough of an endorsement This books visceral illustrations and words are a declaration of unending love to one who is lost an apology for moving on a commitment to joining the land of the living Fellow grievers prepare to be seen Catherine Hernandez author of Scarborough

Leavitts experiments with form and medium over the course of two years coalesced into an emotional inventive work that meditates on loss while celebrating the possibilities of moving forward Quill and Quire

In Something Not Nothing Sarah Leavitt embraces the ways that comics can work as poetry creating pages that scan like quatrains and tercets of interestingly varied but always precise meter to describe the territory of grief New York Times

This book is so beautiful Its hard to find something profound to say about a work of art this profound I just think you should read it Zoe Whittall author of Wild Failure

Reading Sarah Leavitts gorgeous memoir I was struck by its silences The places where language stopped or stuttered The quiet that ambles forward beyond the death of a loved one So many panels hold the weight of an absence impossible to fathom The notknowing How death feels at once too true and not at all This is the best kind of book with all its unsettling comforts Well all need a book like this one day Thank our atoms that Sarah Leavitt has gifted us this one Michael V Smith author of Queers Like Me

A gorgeous heartwrenching deeply human meditation on love and loss There were pages that lifted my spirits and pages that pierced me to my core Sobbed through the majority of reading it but couldnt put it down Leavitts mapmaking of the landscape of grief is a gift to us all Maia Kobabe author of Gender Queer A Memoir

Ultimately what Leavitt manages to capture in Something Not Nothing which to be honest seems like it should be impossible is how MAiD can be personal and how you can hold respect for your loved one and mourn life as you knew it at the same time Xtra

This visceral and heartbreaking graphic memoir does so much more than nearly all the other work in its medium and does it so differently it almost doesnt feel like a comic But of course it is The formal experimentation and abstract watercolour art pair perfectly with Leavitts brutally honest words simultaneously lifeaffirming and full of love while expressing the despair and illogic characteristic of intense grief Autostraddle Best Queer Books of the Year

Sarah Leavitts book is like nothing I have seen before Hues lines textures articulate her deeply personal journey through grief just as much as the words there is such wisdom and beauty here which is only surpassed by love What a gift to the world Hiromi Goto author of Shadow Life

A powerful love story culled from the complicated honesty of medically assisted death With unexpected and sometimes funny wisdoms as tender and searing as they are poetic and radiantly documentary not since Maus have I felt so much in the pages panels and gutters of a comic book Leavitt has made a memoir of heartbreaking wonder Canisia Lubrin author of Code Noir

Something Not Nothing is a stunning visual and poetic mapping of belonging attachment love and tremendous loss Through tiny portraits and vignettes Leavitt charts a course through the emotional chaos of grief anchored in an atmosphere of love and a practice of presence The result is not your typical book about grief but an artistic treatise challenging readers to live and love more courageously especially in the most difficult of times Leanne Betasamosake Simpson author of Noopiming

Something Not Nothing is a resonant deeply felt reflection of the many contours of grief its darkness of course but also how life itself is darkly funny And lifealtering loss offers a new way of understanding the world as it is One of the most rewarding memorable and sustaining qualities of Something Not Nothing lies in Leavitts capacity to chronicle the darkest days of grief and in the process provide readers with an unexpected gift perceptive lasting reflections on what makes life worth living The Tyee