Insightful, amusing, and elegant.
A collection of 156 installments of a weekly comic strip by cartoonist Sattouf that follows the everyday life of a real Parisian girl—his friend's daughter—from ages 9 to 12 as she shares her thoughts on issues both timely and timeless.
Young Esther lives with her mother, father, and older brother (and eventually a baby brother) in Paris’ 17th arrondissement. They are of modest means but nevertheless send Esther to a private school—a decision Esther doesn’t quite understand but her beloved dad attributes to wanting to keep her safe from “little punks.” Being a working-class kid in a private school—where she is popular and does well in her studies—informs Esther’s perspective as she amusingly and insightfully narrates her thoughts on family, gender, celebrity, wealth, terrorism, religion, racism, politics, love, and flies. She also explores her fantastical dreams and aspirations to be a book editor. Sometimes Esther has the misunderstandings of a child (she mishears adult terms, like the name of a pornographic website), and sometimes those misunderstandings are more complex, like Esther’s feeling that homosexuality doesn’t make sense because having two dads would mean no one would be around to cook or clean the house, a belief based on her own family’s domestic dynamics. Esther’s opinions can be controversial, and she is obsessed with people’s appearances, but the innocence and bravado with which she explains them are reminders that the decency of the person is more important than the opinions they hold. Sattouf is a superb cartoonist, and each strip is a master class in the form. The serialized nature of the original makes some information repetitive, and the plot meanders with the seasons and discoveries of adolescent life. But the overall effect is a treat.
Insightful, amusing, and elegant.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-31692-4
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While never preaching, this volume makes a forceful case for creative license and personal liberty, as the artist discovers...
A sharp eye for detail, self-deprecating humor and subtle, shadowy drawings highlight this engaging, ambitious graphic narrative.
Though “graphic novel” has become the catch-all category for book-length comics aimed at adults, the genre continues to extend itself, encompassing everything from graphic fantasy to graphic memoir and diary to what Delisle (Pyongyang: A Journey to North Korea, 2005) here terms a graphic “travelogue.” The artist makes no attempt to convince the reader to visit the Chinese city from which he couldn’t wait to escape. As a Canadian native now based in France, Delisle is no stranger to cultural dislocation, yet he wasn’t prepared for the strangeness and isolation he would feel when he traveled to China to direct a team of animators on a TV series. Within the workplace, the hotel and the restaurants he stumbles upon (where he proves far more open-minded and adventurous than many readers would be), Delisle runs into so many barriers that he ends up exploring is his own psychological state here. As he attempts to place his experience amid the industrial, impersonal Shenzhen within Dante’s circles of hell, he underscores the value of the freedom he ultimately enjoys against the contrast of a city sealed by an electric fence, with armed guards in watchtowers. Even the techniques of animation become lost in translation, with standards slipping amid the crunch of deadlines, and no one seeming to care. The artist himself questions the value of sharing what he experienced during his stay in China, yet the Kafkaesque drawings that accompany his frequently droll narration are their own reward. Shenzhen may not be a nice place to live, but it’s a provocative city to visit—in graphic form, at least.
While never preaching, this volume makes a forceful case for creative license and personal liberty, as the artist discovers that there’s no place like home.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2006
ISBN: 1-894937-79-1
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
Delightfully snarky existentialism that reads like the millennial descendant of “Love Is.” (Graphic fiction. 14-adult)
Originally a webcomic, Minelli’s vignettes ruminate on life, love, and anxiety.
Black-and-white (with the occasional color accent), this anthology collects a series of mostly four-paneled comic strips (with the occasional six- or eight-panel length bits). Populated mainly by an unnamed female character and her similarly unnamed boyfriend, this bitingly observant collection depicts the most mundane aspects of everyday life and relationships—sharing a bed with a partner, feeling anxiety in a world seemingly overwhelmed with unending horrors—through an empathetically humorous lens. Most of the sketches examine more adult problems, however many, like those focusing on self-doubt or finding joy, are universal. In the wordless piece “Thank You,” the unnamed main character sits on her bed in a dark room and cries only to be comforted by the arrival of her dog. In another, “So Cute,” the male character reflects on how adorable his girlfriend is while sleeping—until she farts on him. The foreword by Jonathan Kunz and Elizabeth Pich explains their theory of #sadbutfunny and describes how Minelli strives to impart readers with a sense of hope. With a nod toward introversion, all things comfy, and love of geek culture, expect this to resonate with fans of webcomic “Sarah Scribbles” by Sarah Andersen or Book Loveby Debbie Tung (2019). Both unnamed characters are white.
Delightfully snarky existentialism that reads like the millennial descendant of “Love Is.” (Graphic fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62010-715-7
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Oni Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020
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