Clumsy (Paperback)

~ (Author, Artist) "SO WHERE DO WE SLEEP?..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Clumsy is Jeffrey Brown's debut work Clumsy is the bittersweet story of a year long, long distance relationship, told through snippets of everyday life, drawn in a simple and elegantly awkward style that heightens the emotional impact and leaves you reminiscing about your own past love affairs. Oh, and it also has a lot of sex.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Top Shelf Productions; 2nd edition (April 22, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971359768
• ISBN-13: 978-0971359765
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #257,559 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little moments of pleasure and pain..., October 15, 2003

By	Steven Averett (Decatur, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I picked up "Clumsy" after hearing Jeffrey Brown interviewed by Ira Glass on "This American Life." Brown's autobiographical debut is one of the most disarming and honest books you'll ever read. Anyone who's ever been in love (and then watched it fall apart) will identify with Brown, who tells the story of his doomed long-distance relationship with Theresa through a series of mostly one page comic-strip vignettes. Each perfect, simply drawn page captures the tiny moments that make up a relationship, the kind you look back on in retrospect. The story is not linear (though a timeline/map is included at the back of the book for the obsessives among us) and scenes jump back and forth to different points in the relationship (largely at random but sometimes with intent). Somehow, though, it all makes sense. So many of these moments hit close to home, echoing scenes from both past relationships and the one that took. My fiance (now my wife) also loved the book and elicited many exclamations of "Oh my God...we've been there."

I've currently got Brown's follow-up, "Unlikely," which details the loss of his virginity, and his limited edition latest "AEIOU: Any Easy Intimacy..." (declared "the last of the girlfriend books") on order. I'll review them soon.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars low-fi masterpiece, March 18, 2004

By A Customer

This is the best graphic novel I've read in a long time. I can't say enough good things about this book. Clumsy tells the story of a first love relationship through a series of small, everyday moments. It's the kind of thing that could easily become indulgent, but Brown's writing is so precise and poetic that you can't help being moved by it.

Most love stories focus on big dramatic developements--but that's not the way most of us actually experience love. Clumsy shows the whole arc of a relationship without resorting to a conventional dramatic structure. Clumsy is also one of the few artistic accounts I've ever seen of the quiet joys of intimacy, of just being with someone you love, sharing their time.

For the unassuming way the story's told, it makes remarkably compelling reading. I've given this book to many friends. Most tell me that they couldn't put it down. And every one of them has favorite moments, vignettes that remind them of their own experiences.

The drawing style is simple but by no means simplistic, as one reviewer suggests. Brown's style strikes me as a refreshing antidote to the overdrawn post-R. Crumb groutesqueries of too many other independent comics.

Oh, and buyer beware, the reader from Collingswood NJ who hated this book, saves his 5-star reviews for comics like THE HULK and THE PUNISHER.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down, September 18, 2003

By	Frank Vella (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

"Clumsy" is an intimate protrait of a failed relationship that's at times amusing, touching and heart breaking. Brown's delicate artwork perfectly complements the fragile characters in this auto-biographic blueprint of his long-distance relationship with "Theresa". The novel is less a sequential story than it is a series of passing moments that serve to define who these two people are, how they worked together and how they didn't. It's an interesting, unique approach to storytelling that works wonderfully.