Parallel Universes

Parallel Universes: An Assortment of Cartoons by Roz Chast features 131 strips and other drawings compiled from appearances in magazines including The New Yorker, Mother Jones, National Lampoon, Psychology Today, and Horticulture before 1984. Chast’s style of humour involves extracting new meanings from phrases that we take for granted. A woman sits on a sofa, experiencing ‘The 3pm of The Soul’. As the exact opposite time of day to the dark and isolated 3am of existential crises that strike insomniacs and anxious types, this is a very different kind of interior dialogue. The woman’s thoughts instead runs through a harmless, banal to-do list of domestic tasks: “Defrost Lamb chops. Pick up drycleaning. Call Marge,” and so on.