And this is typical: a glamorous byline photo above a load of selfdeprecation about how god-awful she looks in the morning."

It sums up perhaps the underlying conflict between writer and illustrator, and the confusion that dwells in those who do both, the graphic novelist. "I was speaking for myself, " Simmonds says. "I think having heard the way writers go on as you probably have, it, storytelling, is partly lying, isn't it? You have to make it believable, you have to cover all the angles."

Tamara Drewe is the latest high-profile and perhaps most mainstream title in the burgeoning genre of graphic novels.

Created by Guardian cartoonist Posy Simmonds, it began as a serial in the newspaper in 2005.

The book collects two years of writing and more into a complex modern narrative based on Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd. Drawings and words share equal space, with the words occasionally overshadowing the art in return for a greater explanation and context of the story. The art is simple and not as dramatic or as comic book-based as most graphic novels, which tend to draw from the world of superheroes and boyish fantasies of science fiction. This is very much a real-life graphic novel.

There are no underworlds or overlords, but love stories, sex, country life and day jobs.

The book's title character is a journalist, that unique type of female hack who takes inspiration half from Carrie Bradshaw, half from Bridget Jones and just ends up writing about herself in a self-indulgent manner. It's a complex character for a graphic novel. Drewe has suddenly and dramatically become beautiful thanks to a nose job. Upon the death of her mother, she returns to the small isolated country town to clear the house and attracts three suitors in the midst of a working retreat for writers.

The novel is divided into seasons, telling a multifaceted story from various perspectives, writers and love interests, teenage girls, and all intertwined by Tamara's newspaper column 'Away From It All', where she documents the introspective trials of country life.

'Tamara Drewe' creator Posy Simmonds, born Rosemary Elizabeth Simmonds 62 years ago, began her weekly comic strip in 1979, originally titled 'The Silent Three of St Botolph's'. It documented the leftwing middle 4class lives of a group of former school friends and then namely the Webers with sharp, smart, satirical wit.

After diverting to children's books for a while (resulting in Fred, subsequently adapted as an Oscar-nominated animated film, and Lulu and the Flying Babies amongst others) she returned to the Guardian with 'Gemma Bovary', a character based on Gustave Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary'. "In the original, Madame Bovary takes rat poison and dies, " Simmonds explains.

"So I thought Gemma will kill herself with an overdose. I had even written in my synopsis this is what will happen. I saw episodes where she kills herself and I actually drew an episode where she then metaphorically sat up and said you can't do this.

The more I had drawn her, the more it became clear that she is someone who had reinvented herself. So then I had to kill her."

There is not a particularly great history of the graphic novel in Britain or Ireland. In fact, for years it was something of an underground genre. The mainstream tipping point globally was Frank Miller's transition from his dark and sordid Sin City collection to a stunning Robert Rodriguez blockbuster. The manner of the photography and effects in the film brought a greater respect and acclaim to the artwork of graphic novels.

There now gradually seems to be a new appreciation for the art and literary form.

"I think that's happening here [Britain] now. In France and Italy and the States, and in Holland and Belgium, they have been going strong for years and years.

Nobody really knows why it is that it's not so here. Some people say we've always treated comics as things for children, not for adults."

One of the most striking elements of Tamara Drewe are the teenage characters, who are perfectly formed, vivid and accurate. "I do go on the bus a lot, " Simmonds explains of her methods of getting these characters right. "Bus stops are good. I do talk to kids of course, but why would they really talk to me . . . a middleaged woman, " she laughs.

"They do talk immensely loudly, so it's not as if you're eavesdropping when they are shrieking into their mobile phones. You hear the most astonishing things on the bus, and I would go home and write some of them down, especially some of the language. Sometimes I thought they were letting the bus know out of bravado, because all of the conversations are about sex and drugs; getting bladdered and being put to bed with a bucket.

The language is riveting and of course completely obscene. But there is something strangely touching there even though every second word is f**k. Underneath it all are the same vulnerabilities and worries as I suppose teenagers always have had."

Simmonds lists Chris Ware, author of the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, and Marjane Satrapi, author of the soon to be released on film Persepolis series as some of her favourites. Great artists and writers both, but perhaps the work of Simmonds, nearly 40 years at the drawing board, is the most accessible and delightful of all.