The Nightingales

Reviews Kevin Brown | August 20, 2026 Emil Wilson’s based his debut graphic novel on an event that happened in his life when he was younger, though, as he explains in the Author’s Note at the end, he’s shifted his experiences to his sister and taken liberties with the story. Still, he’s built on that time when he was a teenager to craft a moving story of self-discovery, while illustrating the fear around AIDS in the 1980s, especially in smaller towns far from urban places like New York City. Wilson tells the story of Lou, a girl about to graduate from high school, who lives in a small town in Oregon with her parents — her brother Emil has already left for college. Her father, Don, invites Jim, a man from work, to live with them for a while, as he’s sick and has nowhere else to go. Her mother, Annemarie, isn’t happy with this arrangement, and she makes her unhappiness clear through her mannerisms and passive-aggressive comments. Lou understands fairly quickly that Jim doesn’t have cancer, as her parents say he does, but that he’s dying of AIDS, which Lou has already heard about, even in Oregon in 1985. Lou tells the story in the form of a sketchbook, a brilliant formal move by Wilso...