careersa107

A cute, accessible, and not at all prurient illustrated compendium of first-time stories. The stories are diverse -- the coauthors interviewed people from eighteen to eighty, from all walks of life -- and the illustration style differs from story to story to play up the special features of each one. Very human, but in an encapsulated way; most stories are just a page or two, and I thought many of them would have benefited from a few pages of context or fallout. This would have helped differentiate stories that were often otherwise very similar. My favorite stories were the standouts -- Mrs. X, Logan, Ellen, Vic, and especially Kaye come to mind -- but some of the more generic "teenage fumbling" stories might have been standouts too if we'd known what led to them, or what came after. My other gripe is more personal, which is that with the exception of a couple women who saved themselves for marriage,everyone is depicted as losing their virginity by age twenty. That's not so bad by itself -- most people do, after all -- but it's compounded by the fact that they inserted one one-page panel about a thirty-five-year-old comic book store employee for the sole purpose of mocking him for being a virgin. I have a problem with that. He has a story too, I bet, and it deserves to be told no less than the stories of people who have been deflowered.

2022-12-17 22:37