“Life is easy, don't worry” by Agnès Martin-Lugand: a great success adapted into comics

MISE & Agrave; DAY

Agnès Martin-Lugand, author of numerous novels that have sold millions of copies, had a new surprise in store for her readers: the comic strip adaptation of her bestseller Life is easy, don't worry. This is the gripping and moving sequel to the phenomenon novel Happy People Read and Drink Coffee< em>, and we find with pleasure Diane and her beautiful Irish redhead, Edward.

A year after returning from Ireland, Diane imagines that she has closed the page once and for all on her roller coaster romance with Edward. She is determined to rebuild her life in Paris. 

With the help of her best friend Félix, she throws herself headlong into taking over her literary café, called Les gens vivants. read and drink coffee.

In this haven of peace, she meets Olivier, a kind and caring man who understands her refusal to be a mother again. Diane, for her part, knows that she will never recover from the death of her daughter.

However, an unexpected event comes to complicate this new meeting and Diane's certainties will fly away, one after others. Will she accept what fate has placed in her path?

A very beautiful object

Fans of Agnès Martin-Lugand will find Diane and her universe in this comic strip, rendered with talent by illustrator Cécile Bidault and screenwriter and novels adaptor Véronique Grisseaux.

The writer from Saint-Malo is very happy with the result — with good reason. 

“From the start of the graphic novel project for Happy People Read and Drink Coffee, I immediately had said I wanted to be involved. It interested me to discover the construction of a graphic novel because the world of comics, I did not know that at all. It was really interesting for me to learn all that.”

The comic book adaptation shows another vision of what she had in mind when writing the novel, a vision that conveys all the emotions that characterize her novels and the psychological portraits of her characters.

“How do you manage to convey that in images, with a scenario that is the same as the novel, but cut differently? I find my novel in it, and that's due to the collaboration that the three of us, Véronique, Cécile and I, had with regard to the final rendering.” 

It is also an opportunity for her to give new life to the novel. 

“There are people who discover it through the prism of the graphic novel, it’s interesting. It's a new life for Diane's story, so these are projects that I like and interest me.”

Adapting into graphic novels is a very strong trend in France at the moment . 

“It's growing more and more. When the comic book adaptation of Happy Peoplewas released in 2019, it was starting. In recent years, it has exploded, there are more and more. On the current French market, everything related to comics, graphic novels and manga is exploding. It's becoming an increasingly important market.”

A strong trend

Comic book readers discover his novels… and fans of his novels read comics. 

“I realized it from Happy People and there, I see it a lot with comics Life is easywhich was released in November in France.” 

At the moment, Agnès and her team are working on the graphic novel adaptation of another of her novels, I always have this music in the head. 

“It's not for now… we're in the middle of work. It is a long job. Before even getting into illustration, there is all the storyboarding to be done. It's a colossal job for the illustrator.”

In Montreal

Agnès Martin-Lugand met her Quebec readers for the first time last fall, during her visit to the Salon du livre de Montréal. She loved her visit.

“It was wonderful! It was my first in Montreal and Quebec for me, and it was a week full of emotions. It was really great! I was sad to leave.”

• Agnès Martin-Lugand is the author of several bestsellers that have sold more than 4 million copies in France and have been translated into
  35 languages.
• She lives in Saint-Malo.
• She is part of the Top 10 of the Figaro of most widely read French novelists.
• She loved her visit to Quebec last fall for the Montreal Book Fair and would like to return to visit the province more.
• The comic is scripted by Véronique Grisseaux, who has more than 50 albums to her credit and collaborates with several comic book houses. She participated for seven years in the writing of the famous series A guy, a girl broadcast on France 2.
• Cécile Bidault was a finalist in 2013 of the Angoulême Young Talent Prize and won first prize in the Liberation-Apaj competition, drawing category, in 2015. In 2019, she illustrated the comic book adaptation of the novel Happy people read and drink coffee.

EXTRACT

“How could I, once again, give in to Felix's insistence? By some miracle he still managed to get me. He found an argument, an encouragement to convince me to go. Each time, I allowed myself to be fooled, telling myself that perhaps there would be some je-ne-sais-quoi that would make me flinch. He was fatally off the mark. I should have known it, since the time we were friends… And that's how, for the sixth time in a row, I spent a Saturday evening in the company of a perfect imbecile.”