A truly tender and heartbreaking graphic novel about self and sexual discovery that does not read as gratuitous or exploitative in its depiction of lesbian love. Instead Maroh presents the narrative about these two women in love as one filled with the joy that accompanies rapturous love and the eventual devastation when it ends. Accompanied by equally moving artwork centered on the color blue, Maroh has created an intimate masterpiece worthy of inclusion among the great LGBTQ works in literature.
There is a particular difficulty in writing about the fictional journal of a fictional person while placing him or her in the proximity of historical figures and events. Boyd's Any Human Heart manages to do it well by deftly combining history and fiction without sacrificing one or the other. The novel is written in the form of a journal by Logan Mountstuart, and he recounts the arc of his life from an ambitious student to an impoverished has-been. In between, he becomes a writer, an art dealer, and a spy. He befriends Hemingway and earns the enmity of Prince Edward VIII. Boyd presents us with a rich tapestry about the life of one person and, by the act of writing, makes him real.
Imagine the virtuosity that is required of a writer to write something that's been called "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race", and that has been attributed as the definitive novel about the colonial history of Colombia. Imagine being a writer considered to be at the forefront of a particular style of literature. But you really don't have to imagine, you just have to read One Hundred Years of Solitude, a true masterpiece written by a writer who has secured his place in literary Valhalla.
