Customer Reviews

My Most Secret Desire

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If you were to buy only one comic novella (but who could stop at one?), it should be Julie Doucet's My Most Secret Desire.

Culled from both her memories of annihilating dreams and her fabulous comic series, Dirty Plotte, My Most Secret Desire brazenly introduces the reader into Doucet's world of oddball lovers and eccentric friends. Most importantly she unflinchingly bares all (literally and figuratively) as she recounts dreams which careen among the funny (masturbating with baked goods in outer space); the eerie (vomiting until her teeth fall out, being coerced into performing, um, services on a skeletal man's croissant); and the cute (giving birth to kitten after kitten).

Awakening to the reality of her apartment offers no solace as mundane household objects such as menacingly sharp pencils, butter knives, push pins, fish hooks, and scissors conspire to bring about the waifish heroine's demise.

Rendered predominantly in detailed black and white with the occasional jolt of full color on black (appropriate for a nightmare about returning to art school)!

Treat yourself to this superfun book!

Julie Doucet, My Most Secret Desire (Drawn and Quarterly, 2004)

I might have appreciated this book more had I known its contents beforehand. Not the explicit, disturbing nature of them (come on, my movie collection includes most of the Guinea Pig films AND the first two Men Behind the Sun films), but the disconnectedness (this is a dream journal, not a graphic novel) and fragmented language. The disconnectedness is an easy enough thing to which to adapt, though the pieces here are, well, dreams, and therefore often have no traditional structure whatsoever. The consistent misuse of English, however, is absolutely maddening. If your English isn't all that great, not a problem: work with a translator. There are a lot of wonderful translators out there.

Amusing at times, but be warned. ** ½