Nadine Redlich’s new book is about getting yourself together, spiritual growth and… sideways eggs

Nadine Redlich is back in full force. The illustrator and comic artist we all know and adore has released a new book with Rotopol press: Doing the work, ready to humble anyone that thinks they are better than other people because they drink more water or watch a series one episode at a time. It is great for its sheer relatability… because in the age of self-help, “everything is work”, the artist says.

The book’s title is “an allusion to the current self-help (internet) language around healing”, Nadine tells us. She then proceeds to send me the humorous, and very cliche, results of her quick google search: “doing the work healing” – a few of the kinds of things the book responds to. This contained some great pull quotes, including: “Doing the work” is actually facing parts of us that we have been avoiding (for good reason) because they are too hard or painful to bear”, and this is exactly what her characters are doing (aren’t we all?).

The artist lists some of the universal problems her characters seem to be facing in the book: “procrastination, apathy, depression, instability, unease, self-consciousness, cluelessness, stress, stupor, the effort to change things and a lot of repetition” – her lazy worm exclaims: ‘Just one more episode then I’ll take care of the future of humanity’.

Full of her soft, squidgy characters, that allow us to separate from our human emotions just enough for us to laugh at them, Doing the work takes us on a journey of the relatable struggle to get up and get things done. Fresh on the scene though is Nadine’s egg, a new character in this book, featured in her cartoon I'm never comfortable. “I’m a huge egg fan in real life,” she says, “their shape alone and their fragility are perfect for illustrating human emotions. Everyone agrees on where the top and bottom of the egg is, but when you put it down it rolls on to the side, it can’t hold itself upright.” Perfectly helpless and confused, this character’s debut taps into another relatable feeling we all know. It’s a cracking (ahem) addition to the rest of the crew. A few other favourites of ours are: the pistachio that wishes to not be perceived, and the banana that rather unfortunately slips over on a human.

With the new collection of cartoons and comics that have accumulated over the last year, Nadine hopes the contents of her latest book brings a little bit of comfort to the reader, when they see themselves in her sideways eggs and lazy worms. As for the book’s illustrated pink cover, this is in fact a visual nod to Nadine’s first cartoon and comic compilation Paniktotem, depicting a pile of anxiety. Except this time, concludes the artist, “it’s the pile of shit you have to keep together”.