June Books 15) Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine

[nwhyte]

A rather good character study by Tomine of Ben Tanaka, a young Japanese-American man who is, frankly, a bit of a dick. His various girlfriends (and his friends who are girls, who tend to be into girls themselves) all try to make him aware of his shortcomings (the title of the book is also of course a double entendre on Ben's nervousness about the

Comments

[rfmcdpei]

This book alone convinced me of Tomine's brilliance, and I've frequently quoted his line about the sort of people one's attracted to saying almost too much about oneself.

[wwhyte]

That's funny, I just read it too. I found myself hoping for some glimmer of self-awareness to break through near the end but it didn't.