Customer Reviews

Good/Grief

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Those looking for the biggest bang for their book dollar won't find it here. But if you're looking for something unique, compact and collectible, Good/Grief may be just the ticket. It features more (grainy) B&W visual images than text and "feels" more like a series of short films than a book. That said, it still only takes around 20 minutes or so to read the whole thing. But if you'd like to step inside the mind of a frank and sensitive individual with a unique outlook on life, Josh Koppel's Good/Grief offers you that very opportunity.

Touching and funny stories of innocence lost told in a truly unique graphical way. Josh tells stories straight from the heart, and his honesty, vulnerability and childlike curiousity shine through on every page.

At first flip it reminds me of the movie 'Summer of '42'. This seems like a pretty amazing first work - if it is that - in that the author seems to have no fear exposing to the world what we all are afraid of exposing. And Koppel does it in a format that tends to disarm and lighten the material. Can't wait to see the movie.

Though in its way riveting, revealing and rewarding, this chubby volume of stripped-to-the-bone coming-of-age vignettes could have been much better. The stories are so brief, the visuals so abundant, that ultimately the book becomes rather more "gimmicky" than "innovative" or "unique." It's still worth picking up, but one wonders how much fuller these tales might have been had the author trashed half the photos and doubled the text.

this is a unique and heart felt look at growing up. Josh Koppel makes you feel every emotion he felt as he takes you along on what seemed like watching a short film or a series of short films. If you want something to add to your bookshelf this is definetly one to add. Super!

Although a picture book may seem like an unlikely place to confront death, masturbation, and the Oedipus complex, the funny and painful stories in Good/Grief do exactly that. And it makes sense: If you've got to take on uncomfortable subjects, why not do it in a comfortable format? Narrated in concise, pellucid prose, illustrated by Koppel's own beautiful black-and-white photographs, the six stories in this book are hauntingly personal, told with a rare and challenging honesty. I recommend it to one and all.

Good/Grief should be in everyone's home! From the dramatic pictures and poetic phrases to the eye catching book cover, Josh Koppel pulls all the emotions out of you.

This tiny book is a block of concentrated emotion that is great for kids, adults, and perfect for parents to share with their growing children. It's simple, but not at all beige, and small only in size- not in emotional power.

It's a fat little book with powerful black and white images anda few words on each page. What can I say? It's achingly honest,beautiful and private. Josh delivers a message -- a story -- withoutextraneous frills and empty lyricism. Each page delivers, and thereare no wasted words...

How would one produce a film on paper about themselves, combining both the narrative voice needed in a biography with scenes that read like a flip book on the culmination of both triumphs and calamities? Well, the answer is simple. They would look to Good/Grief, by Josh Koppel, for an explanation on how to do so, and how to did it effectively.

This piece of amazing literature, overlooked by many and many a person because of its seeming obscurity, is quite an experience for its reader. In fact, out of many of the books I've seen in quite some time, this is one of the more delightful oddities that I've acquired and that has managed to survive the many book purges that make room for newer acquisitions. The reason behind it is that it is so unique in everything from its sizing and its strange, yellow tire tread-like cover to the presentation of what amounts to a sizable book on growth, knowledge, and the realization of sorrows that one learns while perpetuating the need for understanding.

Its strange to look at something so minimal and say that a few captions and some black and white portraits can elicited sorrow and evoke other emotive repercussions from a curious reader's gaze, but that's exactly what this book did to me. While reading about his childhood and his family's problems, I found myself sympathizing with his plight, understanding well what some of those woes were like. Later, as his family offered to send him on a skiing trip and he met up with his friend Dan on the slopes and actually witnessed his death as he skied into a tree, I found my eyes tearing up. There, he said that his first impulse was to laugh and that "he kept waiting for a happy ending" that didn't come. In many ways I could understand that, the need for someone to jump up from something and shake themselves off with a chuckle, and the feeling that perfect days can never be shattered. Now, I always remembering the line, "The end was not as dramatic as I had imagined as a child" when I think about that.

There are other things in the book as well, like those of the awakening of the body in those teenage years and the subsequent discovery of the urges that arrive like an unexpected guest, plus the effects it has on everything for family ties to the insecurity one feels around members of the opposing sex. There are also the joys felt when one finds themselves with a new brother, the mental angst that puts us at odds with the world sometimes, and many other expressions that incorporate to make the man. All of these are captured exquisitely with pictures that convey emotions in the understandable of ways, sometimes helping you to see the sorrow, the shame, and the triumphs within the author more clearly than I would have thought possible. For this reason and because I've never actually seen anything quite like this book, I recommend it very highly.