The illustration of humans via stick figures is subtly powerful. It’s something kids resort to as many of them can’t draw that well, but it still communicates messages and points of a view in a way that almost seems universal.

Comedian/writer/ Amber Tozer utliizes this to a wonderful degree in her memoir Sober Stick Figure that chronicles her harrowing road into alcoholism and eventually to recovery. The bleakness of such a journey gets juxtaposed next to stick figure drawings throughout the whole book that delightfully illustrate how ridiculous all of these very true events really are. It’s the comic relief that keeps on giving . 

Sober Stick Figure is available in hardcover now from Running Press.