Off Season - Hardcover

Sturm, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1770463313 ISBN 13: 9781770463318

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly, 2019

Synopsis

Rage. Depression. Divorce. Politics. Love. A visceral story that you can see, taste, and feel.

How could this happen? The question of 2016 becomes deeply personal in James Sturm’s riveting graphic novel Off Season, which charts one couple’s divisive separation during Bernie Sanders’s loss to Hillary Clinton, Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, and the disorienting months that followed.

We see a father navigating life as a single parent and coping with the disintegration of a life-defining relationship. Amid the upheaval lie tender moments with his kids―a sleeping child being carried in from the car, Christmas-morning anticipation, a late-night cookie after a temper tantrum―and fallible humans drenched in palpable feelings of grief, rage, loss, and overwhelming love. Using anthropomorphized characters as a tactic for tempering an otherwise emotionally fraught situation, Off Season is unaffected and raw, steeped in the specificity of its time while speaking to a larger cultural moment.

A truly human experience, Off Season displays Sturm’s masterful pacing and storytelling combined with conscious and confident growth as the celebrated cartoonist and educator moves away from historical fiction to deliver this long-form narrative set in contemporary times. Originally serialized on Slate, this expanded edition turns timely vignettes into a timeless, deeply affecting account of one family and their off season.

About this title

About the Author

James Sturm lives in White River Junction, Vermont, with his wife and two daughters, where he helps run a cartooning school that he cofounded, the Center for Cartoon Studies. His books include Market Day, The Golem's Mighty Swing, Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, The Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules, Denys Wortman’s New York, and the popular Adventures in Cartooning series. His work has appeared in many publications, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Onion, The New York Times, Slate, and on the cover of The New Yorker. Sturm has taught and exhibited his work throughout the world.

Review

"James Sturm's Off Season is a big-hearted meditation on the shifting sands of family and manhood in our uneasy era―I swallowed this book whole and I'll be pressing it on anyone who asks me for a great read this year."―Emily Bazelon, Cohost of Political Gabfest

"A haunting examination of the inner life of men in the age of Trump. Off Season is the kind of novel we need in this moment, forcing us to confront the personal despair at the heart of our national destiny. I was mesmerized by every image, every word."―Steve Almond, Chost of Dear Sugars and author of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country

“Off Season is a revelation... The soulful faces of Sturm’s nonhuman, all-too-human characters ask us to withhold judgment, hear out the other sides of the story.”―The New York Times

"This finely wrought, politically agitated graphic fiction recalls Raymond Carver, and speaks almost too painfully to the personal strife in today’s political climate."―Publishers Weekly starred review

“In the future, doubtless many dozens of regular novels will be written against the backdrop of Trump... I expect very few of them to reach the places this graphic novel does, so succinctly and with such seeming ease.”―The Guardian graphic novel of the month

"Quietly masterful... Sturm has responded to the present-day raw nerves and sense of dislocation with an eloquently relatable work."―Booklist Starred Review

"The ache of a specific sort of masculine longing and restraint is powerfully articulated [in Off Season,] a book that feels true to the current moment."―Boston Globe

"James Sturm’s spare, clean illustrations... offer glimpses through window panes onto a family’s life."―Chicago Tribune

About this edition

• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1770463313
• ISBN 13: 9781770463318
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216