zalig, fan ( )

My husband gave me this book and about halfway through he noticed I was reading it and asked me if I liked it. I had to answer honestly—it really isn’t my cuppa. I usually enjoy graphics, but first of all this is a set of short pieces, and I generally don’t connect to short fiction as a genre. Secondly, these pieces ooze a masculinity that could be described as toxic if the characters didn’t seem so hangdog and pathetic. The narrator’s voice in my head (in every story, even the one where the protagonist is a woman) sounded like a kind of nasally monotone, droning on about the random nothingness of his life. I shouldn’t be surprised that all the stories touched on aspects of sexuality, some more graphic than others, but a frustrated or repressed or just fucked up sex life seems to be a central preoccupation for most of these men. All in all it was fairly dreary, and even though it is a slim volume, it took me a while to read because I had to intersperse the reading with other stuff to get through it. I did it because I love my husband and I’m touched when he buys books for me. ( )

No one draws alienated misanthropes better than Daniel Clowes, except maybe Adrian Tomine. The art quality of these nine stories of isolation is superb. Most of the writing is equally good, but some stories are a bit overblown. My favourite stories were the first few in the collection: Blue Italian Shit, The Gold Mommy and the eponymous Caricature. ( )

Sad and weird as usual for Daniel Clowes. Excellent line work. ( )

No Ghost World, but pretty good. I enjoyed reading something else by Clowes. ( )