A Child of Clay

Ben and Mina have been together for ten happy years. Ben is an illustrator, and he creates a world in which everything and everyone is made of clay. Children come into being when parents combine their own clay with river clay and together model it into a child, into which they then breathe life. Inspired by that idea, Ben and Mina decide to start making children themselves. After a year of trying to get pregnant, the verdict is harsh: they won’t succeed by natural means. They start out on a long and demanding course of ICSI treatment. Meanwhile Ben continues to draw his world of clay, and there the creation of a child of clay fails too.

‘A Child of Clay’ is award-winning illustrator Benjamin Leroy’s debut as a graphic novelist. Loosely inspired by his own experiences, he depicts a loving couple going through a difficult period, in which the man relieves his pain by making the couple in his drawings of a clay world encounter the same things. In pencil and in orange and blue ecoline, Leroy creates a loving and moving portrait of two people who despite everything keep rediscovering each other.