A coming of age story sure to tug on your heartstrings.

books:


	• Blankets Craig Thompson Top Shelf Productions, 2003 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 128 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great read to share.

Bought it for my girlfriend one Christmas and we loved reading it together. Bittersweet, but beautiful.

A Beautiful Book Full of Wonder and Truths

"Blankets" is a literary achievement, and probably one of the top five graphic novels of all time. It's a story so fulfilling and so immensely--almost staggeringly--beautiful that it, like first love itself, almost aches to experience it. But, again like first love itself, is something that I'd recommend to any and everyone.

As a man very much like Craig--a Christian who doesn't find everything the church teaches to his liking as well as a person who had a bittersweet first love--I found this book to be so full of poignant truth that I was brought to tears many times over. The way Craig Thompson describes the first contact with his love, Raina; the way he describes the state of waking from a particularly profound dream ("For a while, you feel like a ghost-- Not fully materialized, and unable to effect your surroundings); and, not least of all, how he finds such beauty in things others might see as mundane. When I bought this attractive book, I knew I was going to be experiencing some beautiful art, but Thompson is more than an artist who also writes. He is so talented at both of his crafts that, while reading this, I often felt that these pages may not have been created, but simply generated by Thompson's brain.

The way the art is handled is nothing short of masterful. Craig Thompson is a master of comic art, and knows how to evoke just the right kind of emotions. Whether it be the framing of a panel, the use of white space, the way some things are so detailed but others look so mundane, the way some things look so realistic while others look like caricatures, how some panels are inked and shaded while some are just bare-boned (not shaded)... Whatever Thompson does from panel-to-panel--and trust me, I've read a lot of comics, some of his techniques are breathtakingly innovative--evokes just as much emotion as his writing itself does. The writing blends so nicely with the art, creating such a tight, purposeful feeling behind every page.

I read "Blankets" in about half the time I thought it would take to finish it. It's focused, poignant, and so very beautiful. For my four hundredth review, I am more than proud to give this classic graphic novel five well-deserved stars.

10/10 Classic.

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Nice Coming of Age Story

Craig Thompson produces a powerful coming of age story in Blankets, and a lengthy one too: it weighs in at almost 600 pages. Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household in rural Wisconsin, the semi-autobiographical character named Craig must share a bed with his little brother. He grows up in a cultural environment that I know all too well. There are signs on the road that proclaim `Jesus is the only fire insurance,' and the boys are forced to attend a church in which even questioning things in good faith is strongly discouraged and dismissed.

At a winter church camp, Craig just doesn't see how so many people can actually all be on the same page in regards to their worshipping of Jesus, much less be able to jointly carry out any kind of cohesive policy in the world. But at this camp he meets a somewhat kindred spirit named Raina, and most of the remainder of the novel follows their relationship.

Thompson exploits the graphic form quite well. The snowy landscapes provide a sense of otherworldliness, and all adult authority figures are presented as giants, towering over the young boys and filing them with fear and intimidation. Though he is questioning his faith to some degree, Craig is fairly devout and Thompson presents a war between his desires and the Bible graphically. As he is told about Hell for the first time, the young Craig's imagination shows people in agony in a style that is much more traditionally gothic than the typical style of the primary narrative. And upon learning that the book of Ecclesiastes had been revised and added to many years after it original composition, the artist presents the more hopeful additions with cartoonish pigs, contrasting the presentation of the darker statements, which reflect a surrealist type of horror.

Though the love story between Raina and Craig worked quite well and was very believable to me, I was more affected by Craig's stifling religious environment because it reminded me of my own as a boy. When questioning his pastor about the changes made to Ecclesiastes, the minister dismisses him by saying that even if some additions were made as the translations took place across the centuries, one shouldn't let that fact dissuade them from God's holy word.

In the last chapter of the book, Craig as a young adult returns home and has a conversation about leaving Christianity behind with his brother. He adds that he doesn't feel he can ever tell their parents because they would think of nothing else but saving his immortal soul. And this is precisely how I feel as well. After years of hearing that the answer to my questions was God, but then being forbidden from asking questions in God's church has left me feeling like Craig: apart from my family, yet overwhelmingly confident that I am on the right side.

As one would expect, there is a blanket motif throughout Blankets, and towards the end of the novel Craig notes as he walks through snow how `satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface.' Thomson would be happy to know that no only were his marks satisfying to make, but they were very satisfying to read as well.

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A coming of age story sure to tug on your heartstrings.

In Blankets, Craig Thompson presents a personal story that many people who grew up as "outcasts" in the rural heartland of America will find hard not to relate with. With art that is both simplistic and beautiful, the story of a young Craig coming to terms with his place in life, his first love, and his problems with religion as he ages is a tale sure to tug on your heartstrings. Anyone who has ever been in love will find something here that is tragically beautiful: young love, with all it's passion and angst.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

At 592 pages, Blankets may well be the single largest graphic novel ever published without being serialized first. Wrapped in the landscape of a blustery Wisconsin winter, Blankets explores the sibling rivalry of two brothers growing up in the isolated country, and the budding romance of two coming-of-age lovers. A tale of security and discovery, of playfulness and tragedy, of a fall from grace and the origins of faith. A profound and utterly beautiful work from Craig Thompson. The New Printing corrects 3 small typos, widening the spine graphics, but otherwise is identical to the first printing.

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