From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Originally published in her comic book
Dirty Plotte, then collected in 1995 (and slightly expanded for this edition), Doucet's adaptations of her dreams are some of her weirdest, strongest and funniest work. The French-Canadian artist writes in hilariously crumpled English (one story is called "An Happy Ending Nigthmare" [sic]) and draws herself as an abject, bedheaded mess ambling through a world littered with garbage. She doesn't seem to hold anything back from her subconscious—sexual fantasies, genital mutilations, messy apartments—they're all represented. One section is devoted to dreams in which she turns into a man; another long piece presents a series of dreams about having a baby (who variously has a tail or is a small cat or "wants to go back in"). Doucet's sense of humor is intimately tied to her cluttered but striking visual style: one of the book's funniest strips is a one-pager in which she imagines what it would be like to shave if she were a man, mimicking the facial contortions (and bloody nicks) of men looking into a mirror with a razor and concluding with an ear-to-ear grin as she yells, "Haaaaaaaaaaaa!!!" The more screwed-up her fantasies are, the more entertaining they get, and almost every panel is a scribbly, quirky delight.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Doucet returns after a five-year absence in a collection of 1988-95 dream-journal stories that, often sexual, generally grotesque, aren't for the fainthearted. In them, she contends with such outlandish situations as having all her teeth fall out, coming home to find her cat bisected by guillotine, being injected with drugs by a sinister friend, and repeatedly giving birth to catlike creatures. Several involve her not-unwilling transformation into a man (in one, however, she has last-panel regrets: "Ooh--What if I miss my vagina?"). Others, such as one in which she's driven insane by her job in a copy shop, are more mundane. All display constant, underlying anxiety coupled with postfeminist insouciance. Doucet's panels, drawn in a rubbery yet dense style, are packed with loopy, off-kilter detail, and the dialogue, delivered in slightly skewed, French-inflected English, adds improbable charm. Unlike most autobiographical comics, Doucet's don't give any sense of what the artist is "really" like. Yet her feisty, resilient dream-self comes vividly to life.
Gordon FlaggCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
