Customer Reviews

Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love...in 200 Cartoons

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Liza Donnelly (ed.), Sex and Sensibility: Ten Women Examine the Lunacy of Modern Love in 200 Cartoons (Twelve, 2008)

If New Yorker-style one-panels are your cuppa, then Sex and Sensibility is the dream date who just walked into the singles bar. Donnelly, herself a longtime New Yorker cartoonist, collects and catalogues cartoons (mostly one-panels) by a bevy of talented, funny women, including fellow longtime New Yorker contributor Roz Chast (whose Theories of Everything I reviewed back in 2008), Ann Telnaes, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, and a number of others. The differences between the cartoonists, and how they approach the subject matter, is often striking; you're likely to have come up with a favorite from the bunch within fifty pages. (I was most impressed with Julia Suits' brashness, which will surprise exactly no one who knows me.) But all of them are sharp (even Marchetto, whose Cancer Vixen I also reviewed, back in 2007, not nearly as positively as the Chast tome), all of them are funny, and all of them are worth your time.

Side note: as I write this, Sex and Sensibility has just one other Amazon review. I find that extremely odd for a book released by Twelve, the prestige arm of Grand Central. Come on, folks, get on the ball. You're not listening to the marketing shills! *** ½

A good cartoon touches us through words and images. Donnelly is a master and in this volume we are treated to her work and that of some the best women cartoonists we have in our midst at them moment. The rapier wit of their wisdom hits the target almost everytime. We see ourselves and others all the more clearly.
Hats off.