Blankets by Craig Thompson.
Title: Blankets.
Author: Kathryn Lasky.
Genre: Non-fiction, graphic novel, autobiography, coming-of-age, romance, religion.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: July 23, 2003.
Summary: The story of a young man coming of age, the book tells the story of Thompson's childhood in an Evangelical Christian family, his first love, his early adulthood, and finding the confidence to express his creative voice. The poignant graphic memoir plays out against the backdrop of a Midwestern winterscape: a portrait of small town life, a rigorously fundamentalist Christian childhood, and a lonely, emotionally mixed-up adolescence. Under an engulfing blanket of snow, Craig and Raina fall in love at winter church camp, revealing to one another their struggles with faith and their dreams of escape. Over time though, their personal demons resurface, and their relationship falls apart.
My rating: 7/10.
♥ There was a certain challenge Phil and I would undertake each winter. It involved walking ATOP the snow, rather than THROUGH it. Of course, it took a particular quality of snow -- one coated with ICY EPIDERMIS -- to enact such a test. Late in the winter season, the top snow would melt and refreeze, forming a crispy coating on the deeper snow. It was most awkward to walk upon 'cuz it didn't give way like regular snow, and didn't support one like solid ice. Rather, it held up for a fraction of a moment, and then SHATTERED. There lay our challenge - to find how far we could venture on the icy snow before breaking through. We had to step ever so gingerly, like a cat, or like Jesus walking on water. Phil thought it was a competition BETWEEN us. In that sense, I most often won... but I knew I wasn't competing against him, but against myself -- against my own clumsy humanity that had lost synchronization with the earth. In that sense, I always lost.