This is a graphic short story book and I’m completely sure I’ve never read anything like it. Niffenegger is an immensely talented author with such a creative mind and honestly her work over the years proves that. These stories were written by her but illustrated by Eddie Campbell and I’m not sure they would be as amazing without these quirky illustrations.

An immensely entertaining thirteen stories that will help you get through any bad day you may be having.

'Bizarre Romance' with stories by Audrey Niffenegger and art by Eddie Campbell is a collection of short stories about love of all kinds.

There is a mix of stories in this collection. Some are in graphic novel format, some are words with spare illustrations. The stories include things like a man who lives with a fairy, and learns how mundane that can be. A woman exhumes her dead cat when her parents are about to sell their house.

The whole collection feels pretty average. None of the stories or illustrations really stood out to me. I liked the idea of the stories more than the execution, to be honest.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Abrams and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

Most of the pages were blank and I was unable to read it.

Every story was fantastic. I love Niffenegger's writing.

I unfortunately did not finish this ARC before it was archived (I'm awful with time management) but what I did read I did enjoy. It was definitely quirky, and I do enjoy anthologies. It just didn't interest me enough to finish it all in one go!
Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a collection of 13 stories, written by Audrey Niffenegger and illustrated by her husband, Eddie Campbell. Some of the stories were previously published as text-only, but many are new for the collection. Just like the title says, these stories are truly bizarre and quirky. All tie in, some somewhat loosely, to the theme of romance and love, whether it’s romantic love, love of cats (more than one story covers this!), love of friends, or, even, love of art itself.

Sometimes the art is a mix of photo-realistic and comic-style (“Thursdays, 6 to 8 p.m.”), sometimes it’s illustrations bookending a story (“The Composite Boyfriend”, “Girl on a Roof”, “At the Movies”) or small vignettes strewn throughout (“Secret Life, with Cats”), some of it is beautifully illustrated comic panels (“RoseRedSnowRidingBeautyShoesHoodSleepingWhite”, “Motion Studies: Getting Out of Bed”).

Some short reviews:

Thursdays, 6 to 8 p.m – ☆☆☆. Comic-ish (panels, but additional text above panels). Fairy tale retelling with a definite Bluebeard’s wife vibe.

The Composite Boyfriend: ☆☆☆☆. Prose, with beginning and ending illustrations. I loved the paper doll composite boyfriend, and thought the story was an interesting premise.

RoseRedSnowRidingBeautyShoesHoodSleepingWhite: ☆☆☆☆☆. Comic. Delightful fairy tale of a woman who, while trying to find a Halloween costume, sarcastically declares herself a sort of composite princess, only to find herself sucked through the mirror. Sweetly bizarre and bittersweet.

Secret Life, with Cats: ☆☆☆☆☆. Prose, with initial illustration and small vignettes interspersed. It’s a creepy crazy cat lady story. Of course I loved it!

The Ruin of Grant Lowery: ☆☆. Comic. I didn’t think the art (bits of photos with MS Paint-style art overlayed) matched the cruel fairy story. My least favorite.

Girl on a Roof: ☆☆. Prose, with beginning and ending illustrations. Interesting premise (a girl writing a letter to her girlfriend, after Katrina), but boring. It felt thematically odd coming after the fairy tale.

Jakob Wywialowski and the Angels: ☆☆☆☆☆. Comic. My favorite! Excellent mix of the everyday (man trying to get rid of pests in the attic) and weird (but the pests are angels). It also has my favorite quote:

“They were sort of smudged, but you could tell that underneath the soot they were real pretty. I felt bad about throwing them out of the attic, but what was I supposed to do? One thing leads to another, and before you know it, you’ve got seraphim.”

At the Movies: ☆☆. Prose, with initial illustration. I just did not understand this one.

Motion Studies: Getting Out of Bed: ☆☆☆☆. Illustrations with text. The beautiful art is what really makes this one. Without it, the story would be pretty boring.

The Wrong Fairy: ☆☆☆☆☆. Prose with initial illustration. A fairy tale from the point of view of an alcoholic artist. It’s minimally illustrated, but deals with the subject of art itself, and it was a fascinating dip into the crazy artist / “off to fairyland” tropes. Another favorite.

Digging Up the Cat: ☆☆☆. Comic-ish. Exactly what it says – semi-autobiographical story of the author digging up her dead pet cat to rebury him.

The Church of the Funnies: ☆☆☆. Prose with initial illustrations. This is the text of a sermon the author gave. Interesting take on art as a sort of religion.

Backwards in Seville: ☆☆☆. Comic. A very tragic sort of fairytale.

Overall, I found most of the stories pretty polarizing – I either really liked them, or really didn’t. Overall, though, I’d give this 4 stars, and definitely recommend it to anyone who loves graphic novels or fairy tale retellings!

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Audrey Niffenegger and Eddie Campbell team up in a really eclectic collection of graphic stories. Some of these were published before in other non-graphic formats, but all are oddly engaging.
There were several really standout stories included here.

The leading story, Thursdays, Six to Eight p.m. is sublime. It combines shades of Bluebeard with modern neuroses and is humorous in a wonky way. Most of these stories are somewhat off-kilter and unexpected.

The Composite Boyfriend is a sharply funny commentary on gender bias and objectification and expectations. The first couple of pages are set up like old-fashioned paper dolls. There are several outfits, genitalia, accessories, shoes etc from which to choose. The prose which follows is written in a sort of 'choose your own adventure' format with several alternatives to each sentence. The ending (though expected) delivers a nice payoff.

There are 13 vignettes included and all of them are strong; a few are sublime.

I came to the party familiar with both of the creators, but had no idea they were a real life partnership. It works very very well and the book really resonates with both personalities and two completely different creativities. There's a cool synergy at work here and I enjoyed it very much.

Four and a half stars.
168 pages, due out 20th March, 2018 from Abrams publishing.

While this isn’t my usual pick, the moment I saw it was by Niffenegger, I had to request it. Wonderful illustrations accompany uniquely strange stories. The Composite Boyfriend is decent but something I think my younger readers would like. I enjoyed the tale of aging in Backwards in Seville, it is moving and heavier than the rest. There is something endearing about the drawing of Helene with scarlet lips, and lipstick smudges on the glass. Digging Up the Cat, seven years the animal rested in his grave, why the heck are the digging him up? Each tale is odd, it’s hit or miss, but always original. I’m just not always sure what was being said, whether the story tackled religion or art.

It’s a hard collection to review being as I don’t read graphic novels. Some of the stories left me confused. Getting Out of Bed is really good, one for the artists. It is a creative book, it’s strange because in some of the stories I preferred the art to the prose and in others the prose to the art.

I think it is for a different reader than me. All in all, it’s quirky tales that soar or confuse.

Publication Date: March 20. 2018

Abrams ComicArts

Well, this was definitely bizarre. I honestly don't know if I have ever read anything so bizarre in my life. The stories in this novel were interesting and I loved how it blended graphic novel style with novel style. It was fun and weird.

With most stories that are an anthology of short stories, you have a few hit or misses. What I liked with this was the misses, were still decent. There was only one that I wasn't a fan of but it still wasn't terrible.

Ultimately, it's bizarre and I have no idea how to describe it other than to say it kept my attention and I liked it.

**I received this ebook in exchange for an honest review**

I'm only familiar with Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, but I thought I would try this one. While there's nothing wrong with the stories or the drawings, I didn't personally enjoy them. They're offbeat and weird with little surprises that the right person will really enjoy.

Given Niffenegger's publishing history, I knew that the stories in this volume would be unconventional. (Obviously, since the title says as much.) I enjoy a bit of subversive art, but I can't say that any of the stories or comics left me feeling satisfied. It was a jarring little book that unfortunately wasn't my cup of tea.

Bizarre Romance includes thirteen stories that were written and illustrated by Audrey Niffenegger and her husband, Eddie Campbell.

Comics aren’t really something that I’m always drawn to, but these are not your typical short stories, or your typical comics. They’re unpredictably odd, perhaps a bit on the eccentric side, and there are some that leave you thinking. And there is some incredible comic artwork.

Topics range from suspicion, to cats, fairies, aging, the topic of comics, and art, love, and others.

”The Composite Boyfriend” opens to the equivalent of a paper doll layout, including a naked man, assorted wardrobe accessories, etc. etc., and is followed by a story which begins at the beginning of a morphing of what appears to be multiple parties love stories.

“I met him at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston where he worked as a guard. I met him in a class I was taking. I met him at a school where we both taught. I met him at a party; we smiled at each other across a crowded room. We were introduced to each other by our mutual friend Paula, an Austrian immigrant who had escaped from the Nazis as a young girl.”

RoseRedSnowRidingBeautyShoesHoodSleepingWhite is the story of a brother and sister who are out shopping for Halloween costumes, and Roselyn declares that she is going as Queen RoseRedSnowRidingBeautyShoesHoodSleepingWhite. I really loved the illustrations in all of these stories, but this was one of the better ones for me, and I loved how the story developed, and ended.

Jakob Wywialowski and the Angels is about a man who has problems with Angels abiding in his attic. “I felt bad about throwing them out of the attic, but what was I supposed to do? One thing leads to another, and before you know it, you’ve got seraphim.”

Girl on a Roof A poignant love letter from Nan to Sylvie, who she hasn’t heard from since the floods began in New Orleans.

The Church of the Funnies is based on a child questions her father about why he doesn’t go to church, and he replies “I belong to the Church of the Funnies” which expands in her mind as she grows up, going from Peanuts characters in the adjacent pew to a church which encompasses comics of every sort, and beyond to encompass all of Art.

”Backwards in Seville” was just lovely with beautifully done panels of art, and a strangely sweet story of a middle-aged woman who goes on a cruise with her aging father.

These stories are so varied in their topics, but I really enjoyed all of them, from strange to sweet to funny and back. As it says in the Introduction these stories are "sometimes romantic, sometimes star-crossed, or merely discombobulated, but all are at least a tiny bit bizarre."

Many thanks, also, to my good goodreads friend, Fran, whose review put this one on my radar. Fran's review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


Pub Date: 20 Mar 2018


Many thanks for the ARC provided by ABRAMS Books

This was an interesting concept.. it was fun and dark.

"Bizarre Romance" is a compilation of thirteen quirky stories written and illustrated by wife and husband team, Audrey Niffenegger and Eddie Campbell.

"Girl on the Roof" is a poignant letter written to a lost loved one. It is a prose story by Niffenegger with minimal artwork. This is in direct contrast to the beautiful panels drawn by Campbell in "Backwards in Seville". This reader enjoyed the "Secret Life with Cats" where a volunteer at the Happy Cat Home, a no kill shelter, had a life changing experience. "Thursdays Six to Eight p.m." focuses on the cost of suspicion.

I have to admit that "Bizarre Romance", a comic romance, was off-beat, however, I like books off the beaten path. This was just the book for me!

Thank you Abrams Comic Arts and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Bizarre Romance".

Every single story in this anthology is amazing. These 150+ pages took me on a roller coaster of emotions and left me thoroughly satisfied. I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book.

A lot of the pages in the ARC I received were blank. The parts I could read where lost on me.