Helen (Helena/Nell)'s Reviews > No Bulb in My Lamp

I was given this book. I had never, before the moment I opened the packaging, heard of Peter James Field. Nevertheless, within moments, I was a fan.

This is a fabulous read. Peter James Field is a true artist, drawer of things, maker of little comments akin to poetry. His vision is blackly funny. You laugh, and you worry about him (at least I worry about him). All those packets of empty analgesics. The frequency of ugliness. The way he sums up daily life: watching Big Brother on one channel while flicking to tragedy on another.

The beautifully produced volume comprises a selection from the author’s visual diary. It’s small, squarish, box-shaped. Gorgeous production values. The pages are not numbered but the pictures are grouped by month. The artist uploads six new diary sketches to his website every month (www.peterjamesfield.co.uk), though I see the most recent month was August 2014. But do go there. Get a free sample.

The picture pages are sometimes monochrome pencil drawings, sometimes coloured pastels (I think), sometimes ink drawing with a water colour wash, sometimes (I think) full watercolour paintings, stretching across a double spread, no margins, uncaptioned.

But it was the mixture of word and image that was, for me, crucial to the little jerk of the heart which so many pages triggered. All my emotions were engaged, one after the other: oh dear, awww, omigod, really? is he okay?, that is so FUNNY!

Lots of the portraits are self-portraits. You can see Peter James Field looks very like his dad, because his dad is there too. I like this family.

I was relieved when the artist's niece, baby Allegra, arrived in 2010. Screaming for all she was worth. All the Allegra pages are uplifting.

I laughed out loud in 2011 at the costumed character collecting money – ‘Penis by the Pier, Brighton’, and even more at the lady on Brighton Beach doing sudoku.

You can see how ridiculous we humans really are here, though I must say that the artist finds himself as much, if not more ridiculous than everybody else.

And parts of the book are scary. The self-portrait in 2013, for example, with black swirly bits under the face, eyes closed and a caption that reads: ‘I’m starting to realise there isn’t a way back.’ The same black swirly bits are seeping beneath two yellow, glass-panneled doors a few pages on with the caption: ‘I’ve been talking to someone about my anxiety.’ I live with someone who feels like that picture. He took one glance at the page, nodded and sighed, then closed his eyes.

This is the sort of book you savour, periodically leaping up to say to the nearest person, ‘You MUST see this one!’ I’ve always thought good cartoons were close to poetry. This does something similar – not exactly cartoon – but little scraps of ways of seeing, captioned. Marvellously captioned.

I’ll stop now. Otherwise, I’ll just go on raving and you’ll think I’m exaggerating or completely nuts. I may be the second, but certainly not the first.