| COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS/Literary, COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS/LGBTQ+ |
| Comics & Graphic Novels, Comics & Graphic Novels |
Summary
Summary
Since the publication of Stitches a decade ago, David Small has emerged as one of the seminal authors in the genre of graphic literature. Here, in Home After Dark, a Boston Globe Best Book of 2018, Small provides a "painfully honest" and "haunting work of unfolding surprise" (Jules Feiffer) that renders the brutality of adolescence in the 1950s. Through "gorgeous and expressive drawings" (Roz Chast), Small "recaptures the inchoate chaos of youth" (Jack Gantos), telling the story of thirteen- year- old Russell Pruitt, who, abandoned by his mother, follows his father to the sun- splashed land of California in search of a dream. Suddenly forced to fend for himself, Russell struggles to survive in Marshfield, a dilapidated town haunted by a sadistic animal killer and a ring of malicious boys. Eerily foreboding yet filled with uncanny psychological insights and stray glimmers of hope, Home After Dark confirms Small's place as a modern master of graphic fiction.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Small's haunting coming-of-age tale, 13-year-old Russell Pruitt grows like a determined weed in the wake of masculinity so toxic it has literally killed a menagerie of pets in the small California town where he lives with his troubled father. The mystery of the mangled animals is one of several dark threads in Small's fictional follow-up to his critically acclaimed memoir, Stitches. In a hero's-journey narrative punctuated by episodic adventures, Russell searches for a sense of "home," as Small again juxtaposes the horrors of an unhappy childhood with the bleak underbelly of 1950s and '60s America illustrated with his signature fine pen lines and grey wash. Even the grill of his father's Buick growls menacingly. The men and boys in Russell's life are absent, monstrous, victimized, or all of the above; Russel's entrapment takes physical form when he's stuck in an abandoned drainage tunnel in the arroyo. His Chinese-immigrant landlords show him kindness, but being young, angry, and white, Russell doesn't see it, at least not at first. The story traffics in archetypes-the mean kid who frames the weirdo; the festering cruelty beneath the idyllic small-town facade-but never tips over into trite. With strikingly few words, Small tells Russell's story in close-ups of bullies' sneers and bird's-eye views of parking lots. Cats, dogs, lions, and other animals haunt Russell's waking life and his dreams, perhaps because he, too, fights tooth and claw to survive. In depicting the toll of the harsh environment surrounding these lost boys, Small unearths an (almost) impossible tenderness. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Veteran artist and illustrator Small turns a deeply focused lens onto the isolation, loneliness, and relentless cruelty of male adolescence in this immensely powerful new work. Set in a small California town in the 1950s, this is light-years away from Mayberry. Thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt, abandoned by his mother and losing his father to a slow decline into alcoholism, navigates a seemingly endless minefield of social interactions as he attempts to integrate into his new school and neighborhood. As calculating as he is desperate for connection, Russell trades one uncomfortable friendship for two others, a decision that results in devastating results felt throughout the entire community. The dark narrative would be oppressive but for the unexpected kindness shown by a Chinese immigrant couple and several small, quietly profound moments of beauty. Drawn in Small's signature style, the narrative feels more like a series of sketches that capture the choices made by Russell and the people around him; snapshots of actions and consequences than a traditional narrative. The illustrations, limited to pen, ink, and washes done in a simple, loosely sketched style, convey the nuanced range of emotion of all things left unsaid. Spare and powerful, this is not to be missed.--Hayes, Summer Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Multi-award-winning writer/artist Small (Stitches) returns with an important novel about adolescence and the search for identity. In the mid-1950s, Russell Pruitt and his father, a Korean War veteran, flee Ohio and settle in the rural town of Marshfield, CA. His father takes a job teaching English to prisoners at San Quentin, and Russell spends his days exploring, eventually befriending a boy named Warren. After a sexual encounter with Warren leaves Russell shaken, he ends that friendship and takes up with some rough, smart-aleck neighborhood kids. Their days are filled with wandering, riding bikes, and fantasizing about their futures, and all is idyllic until one of Russell's new friends hatches a sinister scheme to ruin the reputation of poor, rejected Warren. Small is a masterful illustrator, with an incredible ability to establish his characters' inner lives through physical gestures or facial expressions, conveying a kaleidoscopic style of storytelling reminiscent of filmmaker Terrence -Malick. VERDICT While the incredible success of Stitches, a National Book Award finalist and winner of the Young Adult Library Services Association's Alex Award, might have seemed almost impossible to follow up, Small has managed to create an even more resonant and stirring work. [See -Prepub Alert, 4/9/18.]-TB © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.