Spinning

Walden's illustrated memoir tells of several years in her childhood when she was a dedicated figure skater and synchronized skater which involved rising early to get to the rink, extensive travel to tournaments, and a discomfort with the performative femininity expected of her. Outside of skating, Walden moves from New Jersey to Austin, TX and has to adjust to a new school, deal with a bully, and come out as a lesbian. It's an insightful and meditative look back on the choices made in childhood and their long lasting effects.

Favorite Passages:

"I'm the type of creator who is happy making a book without all the answers. I don't need to understand my past fully in order to draw a comic about it. And now that this is a book that other show more people will read, I feel like it's not really my turn to answer that question. It's for the reader to decide, to speculate, to guess. It reminds me of how in English class in high school we would always talk about the author's intentions in every moment. And I used to always wonder if there was ever an author who really didn't mean any of it, and the meaning found its way in by accident. I think I'm that author." show less

"Your life outside the rink shapes how you skate." This is the approach the author took to recall her days of competitive figure skating, focusing not so much on the drama and glitter of the sport as the outside influences of friends, family and her own mental state. In the book, Tillie is a closeted lesbian who finds and then loses her first love interest. She takes refuge in art and cello although she never seems passionate about either. She's somewhat aloof from the other skaters and depressed, and her relationships with her parents seem distant, especially with her mother. There's no glamour on ice here, just a girl who's skated all her life and isn't sure how to keep up her flagging interest.

A really atmospheric graphic memoir that creates a mood of childhood melancholy and sustains it without being depressing or overwrought. In many ways, the process of growing up is a series of traumas and disappointments, showing you what the world is really like and teaching you how you as a person are built to react to it. Tillie presents her childhood of figure skating and coming into her sexuality and struggling with introversion in that light, and it's mesmerizing, bittersweet and beautiful.

Nominally about skating, Spinning is a beautiful graphic narrative about coming of age amidst absent parents, bullying, intense competition, and coming out as a lesbian. I'm much older than the author but still found a lot to appreciate in her memoir.

I found the art quite attractive in its simple, almost minimalist style. I found the story to be quite effectively told though it did lose some momentum in the middle and meander around a bit as it seemed to introduce more elements than the creator could really deal with between two covers, which is strange to say as it is a very thick and heavy graphic novel. Despite the outward appearance of the physical book it reads quite quickly as Walden uses a decompressed storytelling technique, with most pages laid out in a six-panel grid and many having of only one or three panels. And her story is compelling; I found myself going to sleep much later than intended last night so I could finish.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this book as a Christmas gift.

Thoughts: I enjoyed this a lot, not quite as much as "On a Sunbeam" but it was an excellent memoir of Tillie's time growing up as a figure skater. The illustration is beautifully done and watching Tillie push through middle school and high school trying to figure out what she wants to do was relatable.

Tillie is dealing with what a lot of teens deal with; bullies, friends, school, family. She just has the additional burden of choosing to leave something she's excellent at because she doesn't like how that activity fits in with her personality and the rest of her life. It was an engaging and incredibly easy to relate to story that I really show more enjoyed.

This brought back a lot of memories of taking my son to ice rinks for hockey all the time and of when he made the decision to stop hockey doing so intensely and focus on other things. It also reminded me of growing up and my decision to stop playing music so intensely and focus on a science career. I feel like most people have this point in their lives where they need to step back and decide what their ability really is in an area and what would make them happy.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I really loved this. The illustration is beautiful and the story is engaging and well done. I think this is a graphic novel a lot of people will read and relate to in some way. It's both a memoir of Walden's time in middle school/high school and a coming of age story. I will continue to read Walden's graphic novels as they are released; I really enjoy both her illustration and writing style. show less

A graphic memoir exploring the author’s teen years in the competitive world of ice skating, where she feels increasingly out of place.

I’ll admit it: though I enjoy watching figure skating in the Winter Olympics, I don’t give it much thought during the off years. I know very little of synchronized skating, and only the tiniest bit more about figure skating. So, reading this was an interesting glimpse into another world. Walden does a good job of conveying her experiences to the layman.

On the other hand, I found the narrative disjointed in places, and I was left with questions that never really got answered. Some of those may be because this is a memoir, and the author herself didn’t know the answers (why did her parents not come show more to her competitions? Why did she and her mother not get along?), but sometimes an issue was brought up and never resolved, or seemed to be resolved outside of the story somehow.

Those quibbles aside, the artwork is great and the emotion heartfelt. I’d recommend this if it sounds intriguing to you. show less