My Friend Dahmer

The title of the book makes me a little mad. This book is a memoir of someone who was “friends” with Dahme only in high school. I say “friends” because the author and his friends treated him like a joke and basically kept him around because he was kinda like a mascot. The author seems to blame the adults that did not help him but never seemed to question what his impact was in Dahmer's life. They seemed to abandon Dahmer in the roughest point in his life. Maybe I'm thinking to much into it, maybe the 70s were different times, or maybe some things didn't get written down or not recollected? You shouldn't have to keep people in your life that scare you. That being said there was also no way that I believe that they were friends, it feels like when he started to fall into drinking they just tossed him aside instead of at least once talking to him. I wish the author did a little more self reflection so I could understand their relationship better, it felt to me completely one sided.

Otherwise the author put a lot of thought into this memoir. The illustration has a ton of work put into it. At the back of his book you can read all the notes and references he used to help create his story and remember his timeline from high school. He even went back to Dahmer's house when he was invited after it was bought and did sketches of it to use as reference to make this book! This is interesting to get a new perspective on this famous serial killer. Dahmer is a very fascinating person, when he was caught he was very honest with psychologists and interviews. If you ever have time you can find full interviews with him on youtube. ~Ashley