Synopsis
A melancholic memoir of saying goodbye to the familiar Road trips, drunken concerts, and late-night make-out sessions all swirl together in this coming-of-age graphic novel by King Cat cartoonist John Porcellino. Tackling the pain and uncertainty of the pivotal summer before college, Porcellino's sad and beautiful story is drawn in his sincere, minimalist style. Deceptively and charmingly simple, Perfect Example is a collection of Porcellino's self-published King Cat comics, which have won over thousands of readers with their honesty, empathy, and sincerity.
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Reviews
This quiet and ferocious novel qua memoir in comics format focuses on the period between graduating from high school and entering college. The spare, simple drawings illuminate and enlighten the text, which aptly depicts youthful depression and aimlessness. Writer/artist Porcellino articulates the difficulties of feeling good about belonging to a peer group while not feeling good about oneself. Of all the graphic novels in the last few years, Perfect Example may be the most individual. It is not a story for everyone and may be better placed where books about teenage issues circulate than in any general collections, but it will find an audience. For larger public libraries, undergraduate collections, and universities where adolescent studies flourish. Stephen Weiner, Maynard P.L., MA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gr. 10-12. With a narrative sensibility and a graphic novel style reminiscent of Ted Rall's 1999 My War with Brian , Porcellino revisits the highest and lowest points of his last year of high school and the summer before he left his suburban Illinois home for college. The spare prose, from the characters themselves and in panels beneath their actions, reflects typical emotions of a 17-year-old boy--hope, despair, infatuation, confusion, certainty, and the thrill of risk taking, provided in this case by skateboards, adult-free houses, and illegal camping. Unlike the tumultuous and violent socializing in Rall's book, Porcellino's is restrained, calmer, as it credibly re-creates the Everyteen of 1980s American suburbia. The angular, unshaded artwork is unsophisticated but expressive, elaborating on the unfinished feel of the author's own life during a pivotal year. This will be an easy book for high-school boys to consume, and it has the potential to stimulate new storytellers to put their realizations on paper. Francesca Goldsmith
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Perfect Example
Seller: ThriftBooks-Dallas, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0966536355I3N00