I have been a Chris Ware fan since he guest-edited McSweeney's Issue 13. After that I immediately picked up a copy of Jimmy Corrigan and fell in love with the guy who could draw such simple-yet-intricate images to depict such a huge and heart-breaking story. I have, since then, tried to collect everything that Ware has done, even some books where he was only commissioned to draw the cover. Thus, I've already got all of the more recent Acme Novelty Library entries. (My understanding is that most of issues 15 and below were a serialized form of Jimmy Corrigan; 16 and above are available in hardback and I've got those.) However, this is the first one I've read.

One thing I will say about Chris Ware, as brilliant an artist as he is, he's certainly not upbeat. This story is about a very lonely one-legged woman, a failed artist, heart broken several times over, living in a house that knows a thing or two about loneliness itself. (The building seems to be part of a theme that I believe is woven through these later Acme books.) Depressing that it was, and I usually shy away from depressing , I was nevertheless touched and moved by the story, to the point where I could not put it down. I found myself reaching out to this woman (mentally, emotionally, figuratively) to try to find her some comfort in her lonely world. Alas, I came up short.

At 56 pages, you might not think it'd be a long read, but you'd be surprised. There is such detail in Ware's drawing and such subtlety in his writing that you find yourself deconstructing each panel looking for clues and information. (For instance, I did not pick up on the fact that she had one leg for a few pages, whereupon I started over and scrutinized everything much closer.) I recommend this to anyone interested in this art form, even if you have little-to-no experience. Ware's style is easily absorbed, and his character is one of the more real that I've come across in a long time.

(Although I am curious to know if this woman, created by and written by a man, comes across as real to a female reader as it did to this male. Just wondering.) ( )

With this eighteenth installment in his Acme Novelty Library series, Chris Ware has refined a portrait of modern urban loneliness to an almost painful pitch, and yet as in so many of his previous works, Ware succeeds by finding the truths behind his seemingly exaggerated themes. The artwork is colorful and gorgeous as always, and the innovative page and panel layouts continue to amaze with their complex intent and simple beauty. There is an undeniable poetry to Ware's loving explication of his unnamed protagonist and her seemingly bleak world of empty days and nights. And yet the strength of this work is Ware's ability to rise above a morbid fascination with his heroine's unfulfilled dreams, and find in her a continuing capacity for love, even if it is expressed in small and often unrecognized gestures. Ware continues to dare to be true to the modern human spirit, and that alone makes this volume a significant work of art. ( )