- Paperback: 132 pages
- Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly; New edition edition (29 Aug 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1896597572
- ISBN-13: 978-1896597577
- Product Dimensions: 26.5 x 19.3 x 1.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 796,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Adrian Tomine, creator of the critically acclaimed comic series Optic Nerve, has been called the comics voice of the twentysomething generation, but it's a title he rejects, and for good reason. The tales of disconnection and alienation collected in Summer Blonde--a selection of the best of Optic Nerve--aren't expressions of youthful angst so much as they are meditations on the discontent we all feel with contemporary life.
The four stories here have echoes of Raymond Carver in their minimalist style and focus on dysfunctional relationships, but Tomine's real strength lies in his identification of the "undercover craziness" in us all--the damaged selves that we hide beneath facades of normalcy. In "Hawaiian Getaway," for instance, a woman's inability to navigate office politics or family expectations leads to a breakdown, and she begins calling the pay phone outside her apartment and talking to the strangers who answer. Other stories are sharp indictments of the madness of modern society. In "Bomb Scare" the brutality and disregard high-school students direct at each other reflect the casual violence of the first Gulf War playing out on their televisions. In the title story, a stalker's interference in the life of a woman exposes the empty voids that lie under our social rituals and leads to an eruption of violence.
Some readers may wonder how to interpret the ambiguous endings of the stories in Summer Blonde, but this ambiguity is the whole point of Tomine's work. The world he creates is just as confusing and uncertain as our own lives. While his characters are often unlikable, simultaneously creepy and pathetic, they remain understandable because Tomine always ensures that we see ourselves in them. --Peter Darbyshire, Amazon.ca
Book Description
The first UK publication of Tomine's classic - a series of quirky, spare and often haunting stories tales of modern life
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is my first review so go easy on me.
For anyone who has ever obsessed over another person. The first story, summer blonde really hits the mark. How just a few panels of illustration can truly say so much, is the authors true art.
While these stories won't leave you with a feeling of closure, they might re assure you that your not the only one who has been through the silent hell of unrequited love.
In the end, life just goes on.
For anyone who has ever obsessed over another person. The first story, summer blonde really hits the mark. How just a few panels of illustration can truly say so much, is the authors true art.
While these stories won't leave you with a feeling of closure, they might re assure you that your not the only one who has been through the silent hell of unrequited love.
In the end, life just goes on.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I really liked Tomine's first collection (32 Stories), and loved his last one (Sleepwalk and Other Stories), so shelled out for the hardcover edition of his latest. The four stories are beautifully drawn in Tomine's instantly recognizable precise style, but the storytelling is rather disappointing. His stuff has always been somewhat similar, focusing on loss and loneliness, but here here four protagonists (three male, one female) are little more than subtle variations of each other. Each is a kind of lonerish social outcast type who has deep problems relating to others and whose imagination is fertile territory for spawning sad obsessions. So you get a hipsterish writer who never got over high school and thus neglects his beautiful girlfriend due to his fascination with the younger sister of "the hot chick" from high school. Then you have the pimply-faced production designer at the alternative paper who seethes at his neighbor's casual sexual prowess and turns quasi-stalker in a surge of misguided imagination. There's the stoic Asian woman who simply cannot manage even a normal conversation. The last story is a totally banal high-school loser story which veers into a loser version of a John Hughes movie with a totally ridiculous ending. I still dig how Tomine just jumps into his character's lives, and manages to convey their whole life with a minimum of exposition, and then stops the story right when they're at a kind of emotional fork. The problem here is that the four stories are simply far too similar, almost as if he's stuck and has nothing else to say but further riffs on the same material he's been doing for ten years. I sure hope this isn't the case and that his next book will show a new maturation of his storytelling, 'cause he is a talented artist.
Format:Paperback
I recently came across this book, and after reading a few pages felt compelled to buy it. I certainly wasn't disappointed. Tomine is a brilliant writer and artist, perfectly portraying the confusion and heartache the characters go through as they try to find out who they are.
I haven't read any of Tomine's other collections so I'm not going to compare and say 'it wasn't as good as his earlier stuff'. My favourite story in this book is Hawaiian getaway, in which Asian-American Hilary tries to navigate self-hate, boredom and a rocky relationship with her family. All of these tales are easily relatable, which gives them a truly universal appeal.
I would definetely recommend this comic, Tomine is incredibly talented.
I haven't read any of Tomine's other collections so I'm not going to compare and say 'it wasn't as good as his earlier stuff'. My favourite story in this book is Hawaiian getaway, in which Asian-American Hilary tries to navigate self-hate, boredom and a rocky relationship with her family. All of these tales are easily relatable, which gives them a truly universal appeal.
I would definetely recommend this comic, Tomine is incredibly talented.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Tomine's empty, beatiful realism
I bought this book after reading Sleepwalk. The narrative style and subject matter is quite similar, but the stories are so original in their dry way that I really enjoyed it. Read more
Published on 29 Jun 2009 by Jorge Andre Freire
Ignore the Review above
The stories in Summer Blonde are just less snappy and murkier/ more complicated. This is where those loners in Sleepwalk turn acidic and slightly nastier in reaction to the world... Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2004 by A. M. Lowe
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
