Please God, Find Me A Husband! [Hardcover]

I remember reading "Fluffy" a few years ago and thought it was a cute and daffy comic book, so thought I'd check on Simone Lia's latest, "Please God, Find Me a Husband!". Little did I realise that rather than the exclamation being one of generic hopelessness, that she was literally asking God to find her a husband!

The book follows Lia on an autobiographical journey as she undertakes "an adventure with God", going to a nunnery in Wales and then the outback of Australia to visit a hermit, in a quest to find a man and spiritual enlightenment.

I'm not a Catholic, nor religious at all, and if I had to label myself it'd be agnostic rationalist. But I can understand peoples' need for spirituality and just because a book focuses on a specific faith doesn't automatically make it unreadable or laughable. That said, Lia's methods of finding a man extends as far as closing her eyes and praying, and that's about it. There are a number of pages devoted to Lia praying, imagining God (a kind of fun-loving dad) "talking" to her, studying her Bible, listening to nuns tell her about how they feel the power of peoples' prayers lifting them up when they're sick, etc. It just gets a bit much after a while.

This total dependence upon God and imagining herself following God's plans aside, the book is quite fun to read, and while I did find myself rolling my eyes at yet another scene where Lia tells herself that the smallest incident (like a song from her youth playing on a radio) is God talking to her, it was a fairly entertaining story. Lia's drawing style might put people off as it resembles the kind of illustrations you might find in a kid's book, but if you've read "Fluffy" you'll know that it's strangely hypnotic. She also goes in for large landscape pieces which look good on a full page spread.

The ending though did make me question whether she'd totally lost her mind or was planning some extreme end to her man worries. It's very impressionistic and just underlines the strange way people heavily into religion can reason their way through the real world through a kind of denial/faith system.

"Please God, Find Me a Husband!" is an alright comic book, fun to read, but the saturation of Christianity throughout is too off-putting to someone outside of the faith like me to fully like the book.

Quite simply put, I think everyone should read this book at least once and then think about what they have just read.
You're a star, Simone! Keep shining brightly.

You don't have to be a Christian to appreciate this heart-warming story and the beautiful illustrations within. Get this book, you won't be disappointed!