Blankets
by Craig Thompson
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Aug 23 2011 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Top Shelf | Top Shelf Productions
Description
A First Love, Complete with (Lots) of Falling Snow
This graphic novel first breaks your heart with the illustrated story of Craig's lonely, isolated childhood in rural Wisconsin-complete with frigid winters, no money, a sexually abusive male babysitter and daily smackdowns from the bullies (and teachers) at school.
Craig's one source of solace is his little brother, with whom he shares a room. That is, until he meets Raina at a Christian overnight camp, who encourages him to slide across an icy pond (literally) and, eventually, to come visit her in the "big city" of Marquette, Minnesota. There, he discovers something much more powerful than the wonders of urban life: "how the entire weight and taste of the air...shifted" when he and Raina are near each other. Though both teenagers are struggling with issues far beyond their years (siblings with Down syndrome, divorce), their feelings for each other create a kind of magical bubble that allows them to find out who they are as people-even if, one day, inevitably, that bubble must pop.
Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith. A profound and utterly beautiful work from Craig Thompson.
Named among the 8 Greatest Love Stories of All Time by Oprah.com!
Advance Praise
In telling his story, which includes beautifully rendered memories of the small brutalities that parents inflict upon their children and siblings upon each other, Thompson describes the ecstasy and ache of obsession (with a lover, with God) and is unafraid to suggest the ways that obsession can consume itself and evaporate.
--The New York Times
Revisiting the themes of deep friendship and separation Thompson surveyed in Goodbye Chunky Rice, his acclaimed and touching debut, this sensitive memoir recreates the confusion, emotional pain and isolation of the author's rigidly fundamentalist Christian upbringing, along with the trepidation of growing into maturity.
Thompson manages to explore adolescent social yearnings, the power of young love and the complexities of sexual attraction with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism and taste. His exceptional black & white drawings balance representational precision with a bold and wonderfully expressive line for pages of ingenious, inventively composed and poignant imagery. -- Publishers Weekly
Adult/High School-Thompson's Good-bye, Chunkie Rice (Top Shelf, 1999) offered readers well-realized but fantastic characters in a tale that nicely combined sentiment with adventure. This second, much longer work shares the acuity for character development and dynamic sensitivity that makes the author so compulsively readable. In Blankets, however, realism reigns supreme in both the story arc and in the humanity of its characters. Older high school students who have reached an age when nostalgia is possible will warm to Thompson's own wistfulness. This is a big graphic novel, in concept and successful execution.
-- School Library Journal
Four years in the making, this is Thompson's follow-up to his first GN, the acclaimed Good-Bye, Chunky Rice. His youthful enthusiasm for drawing, his religion-inspired adolescent rejection of art, and his rediscovery of its power [are] on full view in Thompson's masterly telling of a moving, deeply human story.
-- Library Journal
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781603090964 |
| PRICE | $39.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 592 |
