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i guess i've been on kind of a memoir streak lately so i should have known what i was getting myself into, but i was still both wholly unprepared to read this and also unprepared for the amazing level of empathy kate beaton has despite/through it all. the afterword is really good, don't skip. it got me choked up.
i met KB very briefly in early 2012 at a topatoco tag sale, where she drew a stunning portrait of me inside my copy of hark! a vagrant. i stopped my daily webcomics rotation sometime after that, but i still feel some type of way about witnessing those very same panels (and that pony) being created in the background of the memoir, like i'm peeking behind the curtain or finding out how a hot dog gets made.
thought back to this federico fellini quote used in anatomy of comics, which i saw posted to bluesky out of context a few days before i started reading ducks:
Comics create a spectral fascination. Their paper characters and forever frozen situations are like motionless puppets with no strings attached. This cannot be transferred to cinema, whose seduction comes from movement, rhythm, and dynamics. It's a radically different style and way of expressing oneself. A different way of communicating, and influencing the gaze. The world of comics can generously lend cinema its scenarios, characters, stories. But it will not have this ineffable and secret power of suggestion which comes from the transfixed immobility of a pinned butterfly.
my final read of 2023! i generally struggle with rating anything, and i'm having trouble with this book in particular because i think the author gets a solid 5/5 for ambition and a very fun idea but 1.5/5 for execution, and other reviews (like @readwithcindy's) have already covered some specifics of what did end up driving me up a wall about the writing style. my status updates for this book are brimming with snark already so i won't revisit those notes in full, but portrait of a thief read both like it was clearly a debut novel and like a mid-tier fic on ao3 where impossible events are waved past with phrases such as “and then, somehow, x happened,” where a sense of finality is peppered throughout on single-sentence paragraphs (“it would have to be enough”), and where overly dramatic rhetorical questions kept coming back: “of course... how could it not?” / “what else was there?” i found myself doing line edits in my head after a while, which was distracting, and i kept repeatedly skimming ahead just to loop back and “actually” read.
and like, i kinda get it! i tried my hand at creative writing once, and i hated writing scenic descriptions, and would have preferred just focusing on dialogue only (maybe i should have tried writing more plays). the dialogue is the most believable part of any chapter here, and i venture the strongest. i loved when characters argued. i could've done without sentences about the sky being blue or gold or red—or rarely, purple like a bruise.
let's talk about suspension of disbelief. this is what i know (heh): there are elements of the story that are grounded in our reality, like college students doing remote learning during the early parts of the ongoing global pandemic (sidenote: it occurred to me that this book has a certain urgency in its favor in 2022, maybe 2023, maybe not much later than that), and then others that are just... not at all. i don't even mean the heists.
while the storytelling medium didn't work well for me (i am intrigued by how this story will eventually turn out on television), i did think this was a well-timed read, and IRL things layered onto what i enjoyed about it: my parents, now both retired, studying civics questions for their upcoming naturalization tests; my uncle turning in the keys to my grandparents' house in beitou that they built fifty years ago so that it can finally be demolished by the city after months of delay; me propping up a hardcover to read in the twin bed that got transported from childhood home to childhood home to the house my parents now own. asking my mom about the meaning behind 拔苗助长 when i saw it on the page and her adjusting the idiom to 揠苗助長. some might call that projection.
2.5 for being somewhere between “it was OK” and “i liked it” but rounded up because there are no half stars on gr and i'm feeling generous.
also, if this weren't a library book and if i dog-eared pages (ew, never), i'd mark chapter 64—even if once i read it more closely i realized the word “gaze” (heh, iykyk) was used at least five times, including “lifted her gaze” at least twice where the character in question hadn't ever looked away to begin with. spoilers, though.
ngl, this really didn't grab me at first. a lot of the first half of the book felt fairly superficial to me, a little too “yeah, i'm reading a YA novel.” it wasn't until the second half that things started to pick up and various cultural references started to feel a lot more nuanced and real/experienced, rather than what felt like throwaway details (the kind a white author might sprinkle in here and there for minimal-effort diversity points—not that that was the case here, but it felt reminiscent of it).
overall: a fun story to follow! but would i keep a copy on my shelf? probably not. i wanted joan to have a lot more personality, more punch to contrast with elsie's naivete and tunnel vision. ada and ritika felt a lot more fully formed. i can think of about two places where i liked that joan was giving elsie noticeable pushback; one was on page 138, “you definitely said time on your own.” / “maybe i did, but i know what i meant.”
book club book that i'm gonna chase with a different book club book where the book club meeting on the book has already happened but i haven't yet returned the book to the library
anyway: artistically and format-wise, this was brilliant. took me back to my very queer memoir class back in senior year of college; similar names arising from past academia, use of erotica, cycling through genres. if it's still being taught, i wonder if this title is now on the syllabus.
ugh i just love this series so much. i put this volume on hold at the library as soon as it was released and just got it this week. we've been pretty focused just on nomoto-san and kasuga-san up until this point, but this volume introduced two new characters in a deft, nuanced way rather than adding clutter (which can sometimes happen in these kinds of stories), each with their own relationships (good or bad) with food. and feelings are happening!!! not even subtextually!!!!
japanese volume 4 is already out as of this past june, but since english volume 3 came out in october, there's a long wait ahead for the next installment
(11/13/2023) whoops, i thought i'd written a review of this one already... i guess not. hurray for BIPOC creators and truly diverse BIPOC cast! but i think that's as far as it goes for me, unforch. even though there are characters who are deaf, who use mobility devices, who have chronic aches/pains, who are queer, who are trans, and so on, the small blurb you get on the book jacket about each ensemble character is just about as far as their personalities go. kind of a bummer for a title that i otherwise should be all about: “a queer, witchy Fast and the Furious.”
i was gonna come here and lament that the ending felt unresolved, but goodreads just informed me there's at least one other book after this. this moves super fast! lots of old-timey action! i didn't feel too personally bought into the stakes, but it was a fun little escape and i liked the worldbuilding. also lisa is very cool.
extremely cute sapphic offering from the creator of the internet-famous “pink in the night” comic and also PG's lil bro henry is spot on in that sometimes, people want words!!! (everyone should learn this lesson but then romcoms would be a whole lot shorter if we did)
give me more softie gaysian heartthrobs any day. i also very much relate to momo's people-pleasing tendencies. i feel like 3 stars is not a super high rating but it does accurately describe how i feel about it, which is that i “liked it”
(7/18/2023) i guess i'm in the mood for graphic memoirs by same-gen creators lately or something? this was fascinating to read mostly because i've seen bits and pieces of ND stevenson's art (and followed multiple projects of his) over the period of time this memoir covers (2009-2019 – and visually 2011-2019) and we were simultaneously on tumblr. i laughed when i saw the very brief pokeymans reference because i remember that unfolding in real time. well, i laughed internally (i was in a library).
i kinda feel like it makes sense to read pageboy next if i'm gonna continue on this theme of reading memoirs by trans and queer creators who are roughly my age. i will say, though, that while yes this book covered a decade and was full of various autobiographical drawings it felt more like, witnessing stevenson's creativity unfold over time in small, encapsulated moments. feels rude to say it wasn't as deep as i'd hoped because like, this is a person's life.
the mid-2010s playlist from the book:
1. riptide (taylor swift version) https://youtu.be/6wyYucOEqV8
2. arctic monkeys - do i wanna know?
3. john-allison weiss - don't go
4. CHVRCHES - keep you on my side
5. the cure - friday i'm in love
6. john-allison weiss - wait for me
7. brandi carlile - wherever is your heart
(7/17/2023) fantastic showing from one half of the ostertag/stevenson power duo. i flipped through a few pages at the library and was initially thinking based on the art style, teen characters, and illustrated group text exchanges that it'd be a tad too YA for my tastes (if there even is such a thing), but the group texts ended up being a clever storytelling device that both marked the passage of time and evolving relationships between the characters, and the dialogue was full of personality throughout without being a) written by an adult tryharding how teenagers talk or b) way too specific with slang or references to be relevant in a few years. also there are many cute gay kisses.
(7/15/2023) the author and i share a common character in our names that's hard to pronounce in english so it was pretty interesting seeing it splashed across a triumphant spread in the conclusion. tons of relatable moments in here (also a she/they queer asian american who grew up in majority white neighborhoods, whose name was constantly mauled in class roll calls, and whose parents found immigrant community in similar ways after coming to the states – church for laura, buddhist association for me). i was pleasantly surprised to find this on the shelf at my local library after signing up for a library card the same day as it'd been vaguely (waves hand) on my to-read list.
this might've been because i read this a little at a time over a number of days (as opposed to in one sitting) but as a memoir goes, i don't think it went particularly deep on any one topic. it was more relying on the audience to be insiders at certain points, if that makes sense? the art was also a bit inconsistent throughout, being doodle-like in places and sophisticated in others. that all said, this is the first time i've ever felt the urge to write to an author right after i read something. gotta recommend a local bakery.