Books: Ghost World

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Ghost World
By Daniel Clowes
1997





Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/

Ghost World made me remember what it feels like to be a cynical teenage girl (and I've never even been a cynical teenage girl). Told in a pale washed out bluey green with nice plain simple artwork this is a comic book that is less action packed narrative and more tone poem made up of people going "so" "like" "yeah" "whatever". Best friends Enid Coleslaw and Rebecca Doppelmeyer have just graduated high school and are spending their summer sitting around being all pseudo-intellectual, disconnected and doing their best to hide how they feel from themselves and each other. Basically if can you imagine two female Holden Caulfields you're pretty much there. Expect: lonely people, alienation and in inexpert fumbling. It's also good because Daniel Clowes writes the kinda dialogue that actually sounds like it was spoken by people (once or twice I actually nodded my head in recognition). For everyone who was teenage in the disaffected nineties (or - hell - whenever).

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Links: Hooded Utilitarian Article: What Does That Even Mean? / Hooded Utilitarian Article: Someone Else's Ghost / Hooded Utilitarian Article: Voices from the Archive: Caroline Small on Ghost World.

Further reading: Lost at Sea, Caricature, Shortcomings, David Boring, Blankets, I Never Liked You.

Profiles: Daniel Clowes.

All comments welcome.