Book 2: Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine

This novel: 132

Total: 311

Title: Summer Blonde

Author: Adrian Tomine

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (June 1, 2003)

Rating out of 10: 6

What they thought

From Booklist

Tomine is at the forefront of the younger generation of alternative-comics artists; now in his mid-twenties, he began publishing at age 16. Known for his clear, direct drawing and acute scrutiny of his contemporaries, Tomine has an understated approach, light on plot but rich with memorable characterization. The young protagonists of these four stories range from alienated to out-and-out misanthropic and include a successful but shy novelist who seeks out the girl he was obsessed with in high school; a lonely woman who loses her job and veers into erratic behavior; and a pair of high-school outcasts who improbably wind up together. Tomine shows them dealing with bad attitudes, bad choices, and bad sex. The narratives pick up at seemingly arbitrary points in the characters' lives and end just as abruptly. They are snapshots of lives just gathering steam. Tomine's figures look a bit stiff, and sometimes his panels are cramped, but that isn't inappropriate to depicting the constricted lives of his not particularly likable but always sympathetic characters. -Gordon Flagg
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What I thought 

This is a graphic novel, composed of four shorter, more emotional stories. I have this thing where I read books and I get angry when they are all mushy and gushy and have happy endings and almost nothing goes wrong in the protagonist's life. It's like authors want to glorify life as this magical, fairy tale event that is so beautiful and so perfect and nothing could ever go wrong. But it is exactly the opposite of that. Life. Sucks. There is no getting around it, shit is going to happen and it is going to happen a lot. The typical fiction book almost ignores life and all of it's tragedies and goes on being happy. Tomine says "fuck that" and slaps you in the face with life. Life shouldn't be controversial. We can't just ignore the suck.