Ghost World (Paperback)

Oh my god.

I read it in one sitting. It's very brief (80 pages or so) and completely absorbing. It draws you in like very few books, comic or not, can. The two main characters are two teenage girls, Enid and Rebecca, who are hanging around their small town the summer after they graduate from high school. That's it.

The thing is, it's not. Clowes somehow manages to convey in every sentence, every frame, the feeling of being a teenager and feeling the dead ends wherever you head. And the wonderful thing is, the dead ends are not shoved down your throat. It's a subtle thing, present in an empty street, a record store, a diner. Where you find them in real life.

Trust me on this one.

Quite good aren't really the words for this beautiful story of, well, just two friends and the short period during which they try to adjust to having left school and face uncertain future.

The tale(s) centre on Enid (a sassy, witty deep thinker with a sarcastic rapier like wit) and Rebecca (an attractive gentle girl, a more relaxed foil to Enid's barely concealed angry angst). Daniel Clowes chronicles their small time (and town) adventures, with a sensitivity that belies both his gender and dare I say the comic book format.

It soon becomes apparent that the friendship that served them well through school and through what could have been some very tough times (a funeral is suggested in the opening pages, Enid's had multiple step mothers and Rebecca appears to only have a single parent / grandmother / guardian?) is going to be tested and stretched as they grow apart and try to find out who they are and who they want to be...

I was amazed and unsettled as to how instantly I was whisked back to that painful time when you're told that you're completely free and everything is possible. Yet, at the same time - like Enid and to lesser extent Rebecca - you're seized by a terrible nostalgic fear of the future and clutch for security at what's in your past.

My only criticism (and this is probably actually one the books strengths) is the brevity of the stories is quite brutal. You begin to care desperately for these vulnerable characters and want to be reassured that they do indeed find some kind of contentment ... yet the ambiguous story lines and (in my mind) vague ending ensures that they remain ghosts not just from the author's but your own past as well...

Buy it, as the other reviewers have said it's wonderful...

It is funny & sad & true & satirical & all this and more. I re-read the end pages several times & felt a little like Enid staring at Thirties Rebecca. I wanted to be back at the beginning again...

For anyone who wants to taste the blue mood of the early 1990's- 'Generation X', 'Prozac Nation', 'My So-called Life', 'Everclear' etc. Or who is looking for another 'Catcher in the Rye' or 'Life After God'or 'L'Etranger'...Well, here it is...& despite the stereotype of comics/graphic novels & the book's brevity, I can think of nothing else I can reccomend more highly at the moment.

For teenagers; for adults with memories; for people who overuse the word "f**k". For...everyone.

Wonderful; what more can I say?