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Loading... Stitches: A Memoir (original 2009; edition 2010)by David Small
Work InformationStitches: A Memoir by David Small (2009)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Relentlessly depressing until the very, very end. Most of the characters were one-dimensional in their villainy, which was the book's biggest failing. I want to say something like, "Just because you had a horrible childhood, doesn't mean you need to turn your pain into a book," but that sounds cold and I really like David Small as an illustrator. So instead I'll just say that it's not nearly as good as [b:Fun Home|38990|Fun Home A Family Tragicomic|Alison Bechdel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169226694s/38990.jpg|911368]. I only read this book because I saw the author speak at a conference and he discussed it. I am so glad I chose to pick it up. This book is heart breaking and brilliant. I flew through it not because of its length but because I couldn't stop reading. Small's childhood was tragic, with having both cancer, an evil mother, and a crazy bitch for a grandma. This is probably one of the best graphic novels I've read, ever.
Too much setup, not enough payoff. It is one thing for an artist to credit his career choice to an unhappy youth in which opportunities for self-expression were perpetually stifled, and quite another for an artist to say that his parents literally took his voice from him. That, however, is the story of David Small’s life as he tells it in “Stitches,” a graphic memoir, which comes out this week. Graphic in every sense of the word, Small's masterfully drawn memoir will arrest readers from the very first cell. The shaded artwork, composed mostly of ink washes, is both evocative and beautifully detailed. Like other “important” graphic works it seems destined to sit beside—think no less than Maus—this is a frequently disturbing, pitch-black funny, ultimately cathartic story whose full impact can only be delivered in the comics medium, which keeps it palatable as it reinforces its appalling aspects. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
The author recounts in graphic novel format his troubled childhood with a radiologist father who subjected him to repeated x-rays and a withholding and tormented mother, an environment he fled at the age of sixteen in the hopes of becoming an artist. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)818.5409Literature English (North America) Authors, American and American miscellany 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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A quick read, lots of rich imagery. I'm enamored by Small's gorgeous line work.
Reminds me of Asterios Polyp, maybe because of all that imagery and the heavy themes ( )