On Loving Women is a graphic novel, but only in the loosest sense of that often-ambiguous designation. Montreal- born Obomsawin, who made her English-language debut in 2009 with a comics version of the life of nineteenth- century German foundling Kaspar Hauser, has gathered 10 sexual awakening/coming-out accounts – her own and those of nine other women – and told them in discrete chapters: “Mathilde’s Story,” “Maxime’s Story,” etc.
Originally published in French in 2006, My Neighbour’s Bikini is the story of two shy neighbours living on the Plateau who meet on a sweltering summer day when everything grinds to a halt because of a power blackout. Simon introduces himself to his neighbour, Bernadette, on a downtown street, and, after they walk home together, Bernadette invites Simon to go for a swim at the neighbourhood pool.
Pascal Girard’s Petty Theft is a fictionalized autobiographical account of the author’s surrogate character, also named Pascal, and his increasingly hare-brained schemes to stalk, date, and ultimately confront a cute girl he sees shoplifting a copy of his book. This innocent enough set-up is followed by an escalating series of comedic embarrassments in which Pascal repeatedly says the wrong thing at the wrong time and where everything he does to get out of trouble has precisely the opposite effect.
The book features crisp and meticulously detailed black-and-white illustrations, and the whimsical, comedic, and occasionally surreal moments of the original story are particularly well served by the graphic novel form, making some scenes feel foreordained for a visual medium.
This history is just some of what Photobooth: A Biography has to offer. In her graphic novel debut, writer, illustrator, and self-described “photobooth geek” Meags Fitzgerald draws back the curtain on an industry in flux and shares her own relationship with the machines.
The protagonist of Heather O’Neill’s long-awaited second novel is nineteen- year-old Nouschka Tremblay: intelligent but directionless, poor despite her celebrity, and stuck in the well-worn rut of her relationship with her deadbeat twin brother, Nicolas
If the author is spectral, as Moure suggests in Secession/Insecession, then this book is doubly haunted, with the renowned Canadian poet translating and responding to an award-winning series of poetic texts by Pato published in Galicia as Secesión.
The collection’s 15 stories unfold cinematically through rapidly intercut glimpses of everything from the beginning of life to its end, making for a diverse spectrum of tone, point of view, and topic.
Morissette may have captured the utter loneliness of the dot-com generation, but he does not see the Internet as a source of isolation. Nor does he see New Tab as critical of our dependence on the virtual world.
Though I have never had the pleasure of formally meeting Gender Failure authors Rae Spoon and Ivan E. Coyote, their voices and stories feel as warm and achingly familiar to me as those of my own family members.
There is something magical about picture books that manage to successfully tackle big life questions while also engaging and entertaining the early reader.
