Books: I Never Liked You

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I Never Liked You
By Chester Brown
1994





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


I was really not expecting to like this book. In fact - to be completely honest: I thought I was totally going to hate it. Badly drawn (and let's face it: the art in this book is horrible - however much it might suit the emotionally detached tone of the story) true life "lo-fi" comic memoirs [1] are like reading through someone's diary - I don't care how "emotionally honest" it is - I don't care about running through your private memories and reliving your adolescent traumas.

But I Never Liked You sidestepped much of the problems which seemed to bedevil it's peers. Told in refreshingly oblique fashion it gives you just barely enough to go on (even tho it's 200 pages it could easily have been squashed into 50 - but dude likes his negative space - even if it did have me tutting at points at the reckless waste of paper - I mean: he could have tried to draw a little more). Yeah it's slight - but it got under my skin enough to make me not regret picking up the thing in the first place. Which means that's a win for Chester.

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[1] The "lo-fi" disclaimer means that stuff like Blankets - made by someone that knows how to draw and tell a story - doesn't count.

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Further reading: Ghost World, The Quitter, Clumsy, It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, Blankets,  Make Me A Woman, Summer Blonde.

All comments welcome.