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Summer Blonde (Paperback)

by Adrian Tomine (Author) "THREE YEARS AGO, MARTIN COURTNEY WAS A PROMISING YOUNG WRITER..." (more)

3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Tomine is at the forefront of the younger generation of alternative-comics artists; now in his mid-twenties, he began publishing at age 16. Known for his clear, direct drawing and acute scrutiny of his contemporaries, Tomine has an understated approach, light on plot but rich with memorable characterization. The young protagonists of these four stories range from alienated to out-and-out misanthropic and include a successful but shy novelist who seeks out the girl he was obsessed with in high school; a lonely woman who loses her job and veers into erratic behavior; and a pair of high-school outcasts who improbably wind up together. Tomine shows them dealing with bad attitudes, bad choices, and bad sex. The narratives pick up at seemingly arbitrary points in the characters' lives and end just as abruptly. They are snapshots of lives just gathering steam. Tomine's figures look a bit stiff, and sometimes his panels are cramped, but that isn't inappropriate to depicting the constricted lives of his not particularly likable but always sympathetic characters. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
He's on to something that other comix artists haven't captured — a slacker generation growing older but not wiser. -- Andrew Arnold, Time.com, July 2, 2002

The frisson lies in the way [his] airtight style bears the mess and the sadness of sex. -- Ed Park, The Village Voice, July 3, 2002

[He] has brought...cool realism to...comics with its blend of the best of independent comics and contemporary fiction. -- Roger Park, New Times Los Angeles, July 18, 2002 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

Paperback: 132 pages
Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (June 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1896597572
ISBN-13: 978-1896597577
Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #225,488 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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#32 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Drawn and Quarterly

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
THREE YEARS AGO, MARTIN COURTNEY WAS A PROMISING YOUNG WRITER. Read the first page

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Citations (learn more)

1 book cites this book:

She Read the Letter... Journal by Adrian Tomine in Back Matter

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	62% buy the item featured on this page: Summer Blonde 3.5 out of 5 stars (11) $11.53
	14% buy Shortcomings 4.0 out of 5 stars (28) $10.17
	13% buy Sleepwalk: and Other Stories 4.3 out of 5 stars (16) $12.21
	6% buy Black Hole 4.6 out of 5 stars (52) $12.89

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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews

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

Average Customer Review

3.5 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Four Very Similar Stories, May 20, 2003

By	A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Summer Blonde (Hardcover)

I really liked Tomine's first collection (32 Stories), and loved his last one (Sleepwalk and Other Stories), so shelled out for the hardcover edition of his latest. The four stories are beautifully drawn in Tomine's instantly recognizable precise style, but the storytelling is rather disappointing. His stuff has always been somewhat similar, focusing on loss and loneliness, but here here four protagonists (three male, one female) are little more than subtle variations of each other. Each is a kind of lonerish social outcast type who has deep problems relating to others and whose imagination is fertile territory for spawning sad obsessions. So you get a hipsterish writer who never got over high school and thus neglects his beautiful girlfriend due to his fascination with the younger sister of "the hot chick" from high school. Then you have the pimply-faced production designer at the alternative paper who seethes at his neighbor's casual sexual prowess and turns quasi-stalker in a surge of misguided imagination. There's the stoic Asian woman who simply cannot manage even a normal conversation. The last story is a totally banal high-school loser story which veers into a loser version of a John Hughes movie with a totally ridiculous ending. I still dig how Tomine just jumps into his character's lives, and manages to convey their whole life with a minimum of exposition, and then stops the story right when they're at a kind of emotional fork. The problem here is that the four stories are simply far too similar, almost as if he's stuck and has nothing else to say but further riffs on the same material he's been doing for ten years. I sure hope this isn't the case and that his next book will show a new maturation of his storytelling, 'cause he is a talented artist.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slap in the face, February 2, 2004

By	Yelena Tumasyan "loyal patron" (NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Just like his other two books of collections, this one is another SLAP in your FACE, when it comes to your emotions. As I read the stories I get drawn into the charcaters' simple events, yet complex emotions surrounding those events and feel hit when the end comes. I love how all of Tomines stories are dreary, having and/or not having closure at the same time, depending on how you look at it. I also enjoy the fact that his stories get progressively longer (from the first book on) and so this books is full of 4 long stories. The graphics are good and do an amazing job at expressing emotions and reactions of the characters. Also, I love how all his comics are based on a miserable real world and are told truthfully.

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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Work of Staggering Genius..., September 9, 2002

By	Daniel V. Reilly (Upstate New York, United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Summer Blonde (Hardcover)

An struggling novelist tries to connect with his High-School dream girl, and instead finds himself drawn into a relationship with her teenage sister.

A lonely man, obsessed with a girl he doesn't know, unwittingly goes from admirer to stalker.

A socially awkward young woman, unable to deal with people face-to-face, starts making cruel crank phone calls, looking for human contact of any kind.

Fate draws a high-school misfit closer to the girl of his dreams, much to the dismay of his only friend.

These are the stories and characters presented in Summer Blonde, written and drawn by Adrian Tomine. The people in this book, and the situations they find themselves in, are quite often unpleasent, and Tomine never flinches away from showing us the darker side of human nature. There are no easy answers to be had for the problems these characters encounter, and like real life, the end isn't always what we expect, or want. There were many times when I recognized familiar traits in these characters, and that's Tomine's real genius: He holds a mirror up to us, and shows us ourselves, and the world, warts and all.

This amazing book was my first exposure to Adrian Tomine, but definitely not my last. I can't recommend Summer Blonde enough.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars 3 excellent stories + 1 average one = 4 stars
"Summer Blond" provides more morsels of angst-ridden tales of woe to fans of Adrian Tomine's slice of life, graphic novels. Read more

Published 1 month ago by deaner73

4.0 out of 5 stars Sumer Blone
Before anyone reads Summer Blonde, I strongly recommend that they first read The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics and Sleepwalk first. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Kristoffer Sevillena

2.0 out of 5 stars Seen One, Seen Them All
The only Tomine book I've ever liked was 32 Stories. Other than that, especially with his more recent works, everything seems the same theme-wise, and looks-wise: all the guys... Read more

Published 17 months ago by n/a

5.0 out of 5 stars Tomine At His Peak
I've read 32 Stories, Shortcomings, and Sleepwalk, but Summer Blonde is Tomine at his peak. He is the Raymond Carver of graphic novels. Read more

Published 19 months ago by Tsunami Jane

3.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic...incomplete
This was a toughie for your beleagured wiseguys of "Le Reviewe de' Rotten" - an anthology of four stories dealing with alienation, self-loathing and loneliness in different... Read more

Published on September 3, 2006 by Rottenberg's rotten book review

3.0 out of 5 stars More Misses than Hits
I did not get interested in graphic novels until recently, when I ran across David B.'s amazing "Epileptic. Read more

Published on April 11, 2004 by Greg Cleary

3.0 out of 5 stars meow
This book is...okay, it's not something thats grand or something that should be considered a cult comic. Read more

Published on December 11, 2003 by painthesunblack

1.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, yes. Unique, no.
I first experienced Tomine's work when his collection of "32 Stories" was first published. That was quite a few years ago. Read more

Published on November 20, 2002

› See all 11 customer reviews...

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