Patience by Daniel Clowes
My rating: 4/5 cats
i may have done myself a disservice by reading Dark Matter immediately before reading this book.
both are stories in which a man who loses a beloved woman tries to get her back through science fiction-y means and whose mistakes along the way have horrifying personal consequences i only partially understand. this one is easier on my brain because it doesn’t actually try to explain the science and also there are pictures for me to look at…
the two books use different SF concepts to tell their stories, but they’re similar enough that i was all, “didn’t i just…?” once this one started trotting off into that direction.
i will say it’s pleasantly unpredictable. i had no intention of reading this – i’m not a fan of clowes’ drawing style, and i’ve only ever read Ghost World, to which my reaction was ‘meh.’
but i had picked this up for connor and he soon pushed it right back at me, declaring that he had ‘accidentally’ read it; he had meant to just check out the first couple of pages and before he knew it, he’d finished the whole thing and he thought i should read it, too. that kind of enthusiastic response from someone who doesn’t read a ton was enough to make me willing to give clowes another shot since if the story is strong, i don’t need to be into the art.
and even though i’m still medium on the book, i really do enjoy being surprised, and i did not anticipate that a book with this starting point
would go where it did.
and i didn’t hate the art – some of it hit my smalltown sad people buttons
it just wasn’t the book to change my mind about whether daniel clowes is the graphic novelist for me. he is not. but much respect.
