Brighton’s fictional Breakwater Picture House is the setting for Katriona Chapman’s graphic novel, listed in the New York Times 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2020. Once a grand movie palace and ‘the biggest cinema outside London’, the Breakwater has seen better days.

Chris has worked front of house at the cinema for many years. A loner and an introvert who once wanted a career in social work, she starts to come out of her shell when newcomer Dan joins the small staff team and they form a bond. They explore the cinema’s hidden areas which include an entire unused, closed-off auditorium.

The novel perfectly captures the rhythms of the cinema day, for instance the relative quiet once an audience is seated and a screening gets underway. It used to be common practice for cinema employees to watch a film once the paying customers had gone in and this is something that happens throughout Breakwater.

Katriona Chapman attended Varndean College in Brighton and in the late 90s spent her gap year working at the old ABC cinema on the seafront when films screened included Titanic, Face Off, and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.

In the featured extract, the smell of popcorn when clearing up the auditorium – familiar to anyone who has worked in a cinema – causes a hungover Dan to be sick.