Spent: A Comic Novel
by Alison Bechdel
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"In Alison Bechdel's ... skewering and gloriously cast ... comic novel confection, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel, running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont, is existentially irked by a climate-challenged world and a citizenry on the brink of civil war. She wonders: can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege? Meanwhile, Alison's first graphic memoir about growing up with her father ... has been adapted into a highly successful TV series. It's a phenomenon that makes Alison ... the envy of her friend group (recognizable as characters, now middle-aged and living communally in Vermont, from Bechdel's beloved comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For). As the TV show ... racks up Emmy after Emmy--and when Alison's Pauline Bunyanesque partner Holly posts an instructional wood-chopping video that goes viral--Alison's own envy spirals. Why couldn't she be the writer for a critically lauded and wildly popular reality TV show--like Queer Eye--showing people how to free themselves from consumer capitalism and live a more ethical life?"--
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Book Details
ISBN:
9780063278929
EAN:
0063278928
Binding:
Hardcover
Pages:
272
Authors:
Alison Bechdel
Publisher:
Mariner Books
This is a Graphic Novel. I read this book, and I listen to the audiobook. I think that the audiobook was done really well. I found the pictures were very cute, and I did get pulled in this story. I did find it looking on the negative side of everything which did get on my nerves. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.
Great sense of humor, informative and fantastic graphics!
Before her breakthrough graphic novel Fun Home, Alison Bechdel drew a weekly comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For, which appeared nationwide in various alternative newspapers in the late 1980s through late 2000s. It was hilarious, barbed and poignant, usually all 3 three in each installment. Many of the characters who appeared in the strip are featured here in her new graphic novel, and its great to see a selection of them return, as citizens in their matured years. Ms. Bechdel's keen sense of how to depict human nature remains fully intact, and her detailed comic art allows for more subtle expression than many artists might try to express. The story line is well, a little Canadian, ha ha, but well told, and with some on-target, gentle satire. And in mid-2025, as this review is written, Spent feels like kind of a balm for the soul.
A really boring story about miserable people and the super liberal takes that make me think that people may be a little happier if they didn't put such stringent rules on themselves.
For those of us who loved Dykes to Watch Out For, this book brings us up to date with their lives and with the absurdities of living in Trumpworld while enjoying the material fruits of talent and achievement.
